Another Word For Love (2024) by Carvell Wallace is such a beautiful memoir that, after listening to it, I had to purchase it so I could browse its wisdom whenever I want. The author reads the audiobook himself, so I recommend that version if you do audiobooks.
Wallace was raised by a single mother who was often homeless, in the DC area, and on occasion by her brother and his wife, a mixed-race couple, in the Pittsburgh area. When he was a young teenager, he reunited with his mother in L.A., and eventually moves to New York for college and later settled in northern California with his family.
The memoir is not chronological, but includes many essays organized around themes: loss, reunion, God. Despite these individual essays, it’s cohesive with a strong voice. Towards the end of the book, Wallace reveals that he’s developed several podcasts, which I would consider giving up some audiobook time to try. (One centers around the spiritual and moral philosophy of Mr. Rogers!)
My favorite essay has to be “The Stars” where Wallace contemplates the stars and connects to how they are the same stars his ancestors must have, and how he has the same face as his grandmother, who bore nineteen children, his mother being the last, in 1953. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking essay.
There are so many more. I’ll end this with a couple of quotes, but don’t let this short review keep you from reading this, because it is the best memoir I’ve read in a long while. It’s just so full of profound truths, written so beautifully, that there is nothing to critique.
Beauty is meant to remind us that we can never fully understand all there is to understand. Beauty is meant to pleasantly put us all in our places. . . . she seemed to love the world in the same way we were taught that god loves us. By seeing the divine in every basic thing.
The “she” in the above quote is about his mother, who was brilliant but consumed by obsessions that to others seemed shallow and inconsequential when she couldn’t keep a roof over her head.
Someone told me recently that the purpose of exercise is to experience the pleasure of your body. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before . . . Recently, at the gym, I focused on this–pleasure–and the result was subtle and profound. Everything moved more slowly, more clearly . . . It was as if, for the tiniest moment, my body actually belonged to me.
This is from another wonderful essay, titled “The Love” which has many more truths.
I consider it weight-neutral, as Wallace discusses weight very neutrally, specifically his round face and his feeling self-conscious about his stomach, and doesn’t describe any other bodies in a negative way.
