Someone Else's Life: Columns from Insider Iowa

Abstract

<p><i>Someone Else's Life</i> incorporates a series of columns I wrote for the local online news publication Insider Iowa. While working on a memoir, I came to the realization that I had grown up feeling alienated from the community I lived in. I wasn't even sure I understood what community meant. In these short essays, I sought to pin down that definition, and highlight stories that arose out of this newfound sense of community. I have a fledgling theory that the lack of a long sordid history on this continent is a boon to the American psyche. That our rootlessness has become detrimental to the way we approach the future: of our families, our nation, our planet, our species. Most of us don't have the sins of our father to atone for or years of oppression to rise up from underneath. On the other hand, I also found that without the weight of history, it's easier to live in the promise of each new day and make one's own way in the world. The sometimes conflicting concepts of identity, community, and heredity, are what weave this collection, and what weave all of our lives, together.</p>