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Hello, Gentle Reader! Welcome to my new(s)letter on a subject as tangled as the skein-ends of yarn I’ve toted around for half a lifetime now: the knotty strands of identity and heredity. Here, every couple of weeks or so, I’ll be probing the provenances of selfhood’s heirlooms, using memoir as a window onto the times, places, items, and people that crowd my mind and make me who I am. Maybe you’ll see yourself here, too, and maybe you’ll gain some insight, some amusement, and a bit of consolation that the ties that bind us are real and strong, if a bit of a mess. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

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