This Is How I Speak: The Diary of a Young Woman [Paperback]

Sandi Sonnenfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

This Is How I Speak, a memoir in diary form, is an intimate portrait of a young woman's first year in graduate school as a student of dance and creative writing at the University of Washington during the late 1980s. The book explores a number of themes, including complex relationships, ambition, fear, and forgiveness.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sonnenfeld's book is one of the first releases from the newly formed Impassio Press, a small publishing company devoted to "fragmentary writing," with special emphasis on diaries, journals, and notebooks. Sonnenfeld's book is a compilation of diary entries written over the course of a single year, and she says that all of her original entries remain inviolate (except for some minor name changes, etc.). It includes all that you might expect from a 24-year-old's diary: a rocky love life, fear of failure, fierce ambition, and a desire to impress and be noticed. Though Sonnenfeld is a graduate student in creative writing and a published journalist, the book ultimately focuses more on her thwarted desire to become a professional dancer. In the end, she finds a way to combine creative writing with her love of dance. It's a quick and interesting read, though it lacks the kind of reflection and maturity that a more traditionally crafted memoir would provide. What it lacks in literary merit, however, it makes up for in raw feeling. Amy Strong, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Sonnenfeld entered the M.F.A. program at the University of Washington after becoming disillusioned with the dance career she had been pursuing on the East Coast. This is the diary she kept during her first year in the program. Sonnenfeld continues to dance, studying under her former teacher, Daria, whom she desperately wants to impress. She struggles with some of the ideas presented in the required English classes, and with the competitive writing workshops. A trip to visit her friend Tracey leads to a terrifying encounter with Tracey's brutal boyfriend, and Sonnenfeld is left greatly shaken from the assault. She channels her feelings into a dance performance that she hopes will impress her elusive mentor. She also has two relationships in her first year: one with Brad, a gorgeous fellow student who has a girlfriend, and the other with Sam, who might just be the stable love she's been looking for. Though there's more about dancing than writing in the book, Sonnenfeld does a superb job of explicating the creative process. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Impassio Pr; 1St Edition edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971158312
• ISBN-13: 978-0971158313
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,250,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic and passionate, November 26, 2002

By 

Tesseract (WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Is How I Speak: The Diary of a Young Woman (Paperback)

The author, then 25, finds her place as a dancer and a writer as she struggles to overcome a sexual assault set up by a close friend. The diary form maintains the youthful voice with its passions and questions in a way that an older, wiser narrator-looking-back could not. Written with aching clarity, the book captures what it is to be 25, to be violated and to find one's strength for the first time.

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read., September 27, 2007

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Florida Pat (Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: This Is How I Speak: The Diary of a Young Woman (Paperback)

To read someone's most intimate thoughts can seem an invasion -- unless they publish them as a book. At times I still felt as though I was invading the author's privacy but this was an unexpected look into the very intimate details of a "place in time" for this young woman. Very interesting read.

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS HOW I SPEAK HELPS ALL OF US FIND OUR VOICES, July 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: This Is How I Speak: The Diary of a Young Woman (Paperback)

The Diary of Anais Nin meets The Paper Chase is this intimate, entertaining and moving portrait of an ambitious dancer turned writer coping with love, loss, sex, competition, endless Seattle rain, and a bad therapist at one of the nation's leading creative writing programs. THIS IS HOW I SPEAK offers a little bit of something for everyone--stories about relationships, about ambition, about the pain of sexual assault, about healing, about finding one's own voice in a world already filled with the voices of others.