The Brooklyn Rail

Gendering Biography

By Stephanie Siu

There are aspects of a person’s life that aren’t subject to opinion: age, country of birth, or the manner of their death. Within the murkier, subjective areas is where the historian's prowess—and prejudice—may lurk. While Weller elucidated Carrie Fisher’s inner world, Moser’s “mansplaining” of Susan Sontag reveals more about him than his subject.

In Conversation

In Conversation: SUSAN SHAPIRO with Stephanie Siu

By Stephanie Siu

Can you forgive someone who isn’t sorry? Should you? That’s what haunted popular New School writing professor Susan Shapiro following the perplexing betrayal of a trusted mentor after 15 years of friendship. In Shapiro’s candid, captivating new memoir, The Forgiveness Tour, she tries everything to move on: ghosting him, play-by-play analysis of their fights, even summoning a Yiddish curse for revenge. She stumbles on a “billion-dollar Forgiveness Industry touting the personal benefits of absolution,” but the skeptical journalist “fears it’s all bullshit.”