A Poignant Memoir Collection That Examines Biographies as a Genre, Reflect on Life’s Lessons Through Compelling Stories
Throughout her life, Megan Marshall has sought to “learn what [she] could from others: how to live, how not to live, what it means to live.” As a biographer, these lessons have culminated in years of research and investigations into rewriting women into history — from pioneers in the rise of American Transcendentalism to more personal accounts, such as her former professor, Elizabeth Bishop. While these works earned critical acclaim, Marshall often remained apart from the stories she told, until her most recent work. After Lives is a poignant memoir in which she turns inward, meditating on the lessons she has drawn from both her life and career.
Marshall begins by reflecting on the impact of writing a biography, where one simultaneously resurrects and recreates another’s life while acknowledging their death. Structured as six essays, it chronicles her personal and professional experiences, from growing up with an unstable father to her year in Japan as a visiting professor. Woven through each piece is a call to question and seek answers, whether in another’s life or one’s own. She also reexamines her legacy, as in her essay on her grandmother’s portrait, where the figure is shown as right-handed rather than left-handed, revealing a long-standing prejudice against left-handed individuals. These small revelations lead to larger reflections on life, death, and loss. Ultimately, Marshall’s introspection invites readers to grapple with their own stories and consider the legacy they wish to leave behind.
Megan Marshall is a professor of nonfiction writing and archival research at Emerson College. She has received numerous accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 biography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, and was a Pulitzer finalist for her first biography, The Peabody Sisters. In 2022, she was honored with the Biographers International Organization Award for her contributions to the art of biography, as well as the Thoreau Society’s Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award for her work on American Transcendentalism.
Reviews and Endorsements of this publication include the following:
“This is not a typhoon-like book that will knock you over with its coherence, but irregular winds blowing this way and that, some hotter than others … Like decorating a house, Marshall suggests with this book, the act of crafting a biography is never really finished, and certain odds and ends can be hard to clean up.”
— Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
“Ms. Marshall is at her best when a piece of material evidence—a letter, a photograph, a forgotten artifact—piques her interest … Perhaps the most poignant chapter of After Lives is set in Kyoto, where Ms. Marshall spent a few months as a visiting professor and found herself on the trail of Japan’s version of Henry David Thoreau, the poet Kamo no Chōmei.”
— Christoph Irmscher, the Wall Street Journal
“Poignant … She draws sustenance from the women in her biographies, all of whose lives were bordered with calamity and loss.”
— April Austin, Christian Science Monitor
For more information on this publication, click here:
For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. To sign up for the Lived Theology newsletter, click here.