Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of My Nonexistence

Recollections of My Nonexistence is a personal, cultural, political, and journalistic hybrid narrative about formative years in the life of Rebecca Solnit. A first-person account from San Francisco in the 1980s, she describes finding her voice, and invokes the possibility of others finding their voices as well. Nobody should have to carry the burden of nonexistence. Solnit finds beauty in the contemporary revolution of storytelling, and says each voice has a capacity to bear witness to what’s happened.

Book excerpt: Recollections of My Nonexistence Chapter 1:

One day long ago, I looked at myself as I faced a full length mirror and saw my image darken and soften and then seem to retreat, as though I was vanishing from the world rather than that my mind was shutting it out. I steadied my- self on the door frame just across the hall from the mirror, and then my legs crumpled under me. My own image drifted away from me into darkness, as though I was only a ghost fading even from my own sight.