Sundress Reads: Review of Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature

Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) is a bleeding-heart memoir from Jennifer Lang about the desperate lows and blissful highs of marriage. Capturing her emotions throughout her marriage in a refreshingly honest and vulnerable way, Lang tackles the biggest question-mark in marriage through confessional. In her poem “How?”, she captures the speculation in beautiful language:

“As I slip a ring on Philippe’s finger, I think about how he blinks his eyes like an impish little boy, how he looks like he does dozens of pushups every day, how he makes jokes with a straight face. How we are going to spend our lives together. How are we going to spend our lives together?” (16).

The themes of resignation due to religious differences occur throughout the entirety of the work. Places We Left Behind takes no time presenting, and therefore foreshadowing, the biggest point of tension of the manuscript: religion. Lang’s work features charts and graphs in several poems, but the poem “Seesaw” uses it especially well. Lang cleverly inserts a simple line graph with her [“me”] on one end and “him” on the other. The horizontal line tilts so that “him” is higher on the right than her [“me”] on the left. This shorter piece accomplishes so much with so little space on the page, especially with the dialogue between the speaker and the husband on doing Shabbat “more like me [him]” (10).

Speaking of graphs and charts, Lang’s creative nonfiction manuscript is refreshingly experimental. Lang takes strides to use the page as a canvas for telling a story in any way she can. In true confessional form, Lang recalls the pros and cons list she made regarding Philippe before they wed, courtesy of an idea her sibling had. On “Sides,”the list is shown, with the very telling line “when the negatives outweigh the positives, I tear out the sheet and toss it” (9). Lang’s honesty about marriage isn’t something always seen in the literary world. It’s common to use rose-tinted glasses, especially in creative nonfiction and poetry (of which there are a few pieces in the manuscript), but Lang uses the clarity to her advantage, especially when describing her time in Israel. The speaker’s visit to Israel is often presented as a short-term band aid for a long-term issue within the marriage, especially when the question of starting a family is introduced despite rising conflicts in the Middle East. Interestingly, the speaker’s pieces about the war(s) she engaged with are often presented in poems rather than the usual short creative nonfiction pieces that make up the bulk of the manuscript. Lang describes her first time having to use a gas mask during a bombing in the heartbreaking, two-part poem “Distort:”

“…don gas masks, gag, hear husband say breathe (try not to gag), hear rockets outside windows covered with industrial strength plastic sheeting, gag, hear CNN report live in the middle east (try not to gag)-” (20).

Places We Left Behind does an amazing job capturing the essence of true loneliness along with the waiting steps one can take to find themselves in a better place despite such feelings. Lang writes about loneliness in a way that I haven’t seen in other work: loneliness as the matriarch of a family. Deeper into the manuscript, in “4:1,” Lang describes the alienation she feels with her husband and three kids, all enthusiastically practicing Judaism along with their father, while Lang only does so out of obligation. The pain in the poem is clear as she writes:

“Just like the four of them shower before Shabbat starts on Friday,
Just like the four of them dress up and leave for synagogue every Saturday morning,
Just like the four of them sleep outside in the Sukkah every Autumn,
Just like the four of them eat only Kosher meat.
Our family dynamic is often 4:1, leaving me Odd Mom Out and uncomfortable in my own home, in my own skin” (44).

This piece makes the other dozens of pages about the fear of raising children in a world like we inhabit hurt so much more. To juxtapose the poem with early 90’s Middle Eastern tensions, the theme of a lack of safety comes up again in the seemingly obligatory 9/11 poem, in which Lang admits that nowhere is safe. Not even New York.

Places We Left Behind is a must-read for anyone looking for an exhilarating memoir with a beautiful ending. It’s no wonder that in a memoir full of so much doubt, so many trials and tribulations, in the end, Lang’s love for her family prevails and she chooses to stay with them and move back to Israel. It is a meditation on the meaning of marriage, the common “what ifs” of motherhood, and the journey of finding yourself when it seems all you are is a dot in the universe. Or, at the very least, being okay with that fact.

Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press

Lyra Thomas is a black nonbinary poet from the St Louis area, currently residing in Carbondale, IL for their MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University, which is also their alma mater. They received their BA in Creative Writing in 2018. Lyra enjoys reading/writing poetry, curating Spotify playlists, and cuddling with their cats Max and Silver.