Lidia Yuknavitch’s 'Reading the Waves' redefines personal identity

Reading the Waves explores grief, transformation, and self-reinvention in a memoir that defies conventions.

Illustration by Yifei Fang

By Novanka Laras and Adelina Indah

Reading the Waves: A Memoir, by Lidia Yuknavitch

Lidia Yuknavitch has never been one for conventional storytelling. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, her work refuses to conform to neatly packaged narratives with clean resolutions. Instead, she embraces raw, unfiltered experiences, diving into the chaos of human existence with a fearless, unapologetic style.

Her latest memoir, Reading the Waves, follows this same trajectory. More a collection of stream-of-consciousness essays than a traditional memoir, the book reflects on Yuknavitch’s life, revisiting past traumas, personal reinvention, and the fluid nature of identity. Now in her early 60s and living on the Oregon coast, she reexamines who she was, who she is, and who she may yet become.

As she puts it, “I do not intend to mine my personal life for dramatic scenes and serve them up. … I mean to ask if there is a way to read my own past differently, using what I have learned from literature: how stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions.”

A deep dive into personal history

Fans of Yuknavitch’s earlier works, especially her acclaimed 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water, will recognize familiar themes in Reading the Waves. The book revisits significant moments from her life, including:

The stillbirth of her daughter in 1983
The death of her second husband, Devin, who fell or jumped from a crane in 2015
Her tumultuous relationship with her parents, particularly her abusive father
Her struggles with addiction and turbulent romantic relationships
The murder of her cousin Michelle, who was brutally beaten and left in a burning car
Her third marriage to Andy, with whom she has a college-age son

While these events shape the memoir’s foundation, the book is not just about revisiting past wounds. Instead, Yuknavitch explores how identity is constantly evolving. She challenges the idea of a fixed self, arguing that human beings are always in flux, capable of shedding old versions of themselves to become something new.

The power of storytelling and reinvention

At its core, Reading the Waves is about the stories we tell ourselves—and how those narratives shape our lives. Yuknavitch urges readers to reconsider the importance of plot and action in personal history, arguing that small, seemingly insignificant moments often carry more meaning than dramatic life events.

“People are sometimes too interested in ‘what happened’—the plod of plot and action. … The drama is not the story, or the story of why and how relationships dissolve or crescendo is every story, living inside all of us to different degrees, rising and falling in waves.”

Despite the heavy themes, the book is not without humor. Yuknavitch’s sharp wit shines in moments of levity, such as her recollections of life in a hippie commune near Creswell, Oregon, or her time in a boardinghouse in Somerville, Massachusetts, run by an eccentric landlady named Olga. These anecdotes provide balance, proving that even in the midst of grief and transformation, joy and absurdity remain ever-present.

Lessons in resilience and change

In the final pages of the book, Yuknavitch shifts from memoirist to guide, offering insights on how readers can reshape their own identities. She describes trauma as an open-ended narrative, capable of being rewritten. Her advice is poetic yet powerful:

“Inherited trauma is a story form always open to dissolving and re-forming as something else. Beautiful alchemies. Lifedeath cycles. Reach. Leap. Unfurl. Tendril. Reshape.”

A memoir that lingers

Reading the Waves is a bold, unfiltered exploration of what it means to be human. Yuknavitch’s fearless storytelling invites readers to examine their own pasts and consider how they might redefine themselves. The memoir is not a simple recounting of events, but a meditation on transformation—how we grow, how we shed old selves, and how we continue to evolve despite the scars we carry.

For those willing to dive deep, Reading the Waves is an electrifying, thought-provoking journey—one that refuses to be contained by traditional expectations.

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