I’ve recently finished a wonderful memoir by geobiologist Hope Jahren called Lab Girl. The book is many things—“a treatise on plant life,” the jacket blurb tells us—but it’s also about scientists, the world of science, and about being a woman in a field dominated by men.
Perhaps as a side note, it is marvelously written, and where a person who has accomplished so much in a career found time to polish her writing chops is beyond my ability to fathom. Read it. Hope Jahren has some wonderful stories to tell to you.
At the end of a long silence Bill [my lab partner] surprised me by saying with quiet seriousness, “Put it in a book. Do me that favor someday.”
Bill knows about my writing. He knows about the pages of poetry stuffed into my car’s glove box; he knows about the many nextstory.doc files on my hard drive; he knows how I like to sift through the thesaurus for hours; he knows that nothing feels better to me than finding exactly the right word that stabs cleanly at the heart of what you are trying to say. He knows that I read most books twice or more and write long letters to their authors, and that sometimes I even get an answer. He knows how much I need to write. But he had never given me permission to write about [our work] until that day. I nodded and inwardly vowed to do my best. …
I have accepted that I don’t know all the things that I ought to know, but I do know the things that I need to know. … Like anyone else who harbors precious secrets wrought from years of searching, I have longed for someone to tell.
Transcribed by me from pages 276–278 of my hardcover copy of Lab Girl, © 2016, Alfred A. Knopf.
Tweet: Longing for someone to tell your stories to? Write a memoir.
Tweet: “He knows how much I need to write.”
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”