Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love became runaway best sellers in the emerging category of memoirs.? Readers were drawn like magnets to Lamott’s faith journey, set amongst her left-wing family in California and they were equally smitten with Gilbert’s personal growth as she explored Italy, India and Indonesia.
Meet Sarah Cunningham.
Sarah is the author of Picking Dandelions: A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds (Zondervan 2010).
On one hand, Sarah is quite different than Lamott and Gilbert. She grew up in the cornfields of Michigan. Her parents were Southern Baptists. They voted Republican. She’s been married to one man, a college sweetheart, for seven years.
In spite of those differences, there are some things in Lamott and Gilbert that you’ll find in Sarah too.
Honesty.
Humor.
Quirkiness.
Guts to explore and laugh at life’s dysfunctions.
Sarah Cunningham’s new memoir, Picking Dandelions: A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds, uses some of the same approach to delve into the quirkiness and humor on the other side of the religious and political spectrum.
Take how Sarah journaled her prideful thoughts for a week straight…something she reports backfired because people don’t make 4,000 page journals. Or the heart to heart talk she has with God in which she cites Drew Barrymore’s career while praying (as if God is impressed by an occasional pop culture reference, she says). Or her story that ends with this line: “Jesus wouldn’t charge people to pee.”
In the end, Sarah’s loose collection of stories accomplishes something insightful too. A subtle theme hangs in the background suggesting that humans, especially those on a quest for God, cannot afford the luxury of unchanged living.
It’s sort of refreshing that Sarah, raised in the right wing, can weave elements of faith into a spiritual memoir too because it suggests that there are valid, messy spiritual discoveries for all of us, no matter what corner of the earth or political landscape we grow up on.
Intrigued? Learn more about Picking Dandelions: A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds.
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What’s a memoir that’s impacted you?
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