Reality vs. Memory: A Book Review of How to Sit by Tyrese Coleman
By Rachel Vinyard
“Time doesn't heal all wounds. It may dull the pain of some of them; help make the stabbing, the healing process, more tolerable. It may make you forget that you were even injured, for a moment, but time doesn't heal everything. Time—waiting, anticipating, wondering, hoping—can make things worse, and when those unhealed wounds inevitably reopen, you feel all the pain again.”
Tyrese Coleman’s How to Sit is a collection of essays and stories that make up the memoir of a young black woman who aims to share her trauma. Coleman shares her experiences of sexual abuse and familial discourse, growing up poor, and sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of her mother and grandmother. Coleman’s writing is an exploration of self and an expression of trauma healing. A common idea throughout the collection is this line between fiction and reality. How much of our memories are actually accurate? And why does some of the trauma that we remember feel like a story rather than an event that actually happened? Coleman explores the idea that our memories are not factual. They are based largely on emotion and how past events affected us. There are always multiple sides to a story. Coleman writes in an author’s note that “this collection of nonfiction and not-quite-nonfiction is intended to make you wonder what is and what isn’t true, and whether or not that matters.”
Reading through the collection, I found myself wondering how I can relate to the text and what Coleman describes she went through. Coleman talks about growing up poor, her relationship with a careless mother and a judgmental grandmother. She explains her struggles with poverty, race, and sexual trauma. Her stories are personal but unfortunately not unique. Whether it's the point that women are seen as sexual objects to some men, that this patriarchal ideology is ingrained in the minds of mother figures, or that you are forced to make sacrifices when you are growing up as a poor young black woman, Coleman gets her point across. It’ll either open your eyes to very real and personal struggles some women go through or put your own life into a new perspective. At its core, the memoir relays the idea of looking into the past, whether it be the past of yourself or your family, and uncovers unresolved trauma. In the end, Coleman explains how she was able to move on and finally begin to heal from the trauma she endured.
This memoir aims to share the reality of how distressing events can affect you years in the future. Without explicitly saying it, Coleman talks about symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), explaining how looking back at traumatic events can be a blurry experience. A common symptom of PTSD is dissociation, a process in which the mind will distance itself from a traumatic situation. This sort of paralytic freeze response may also cause the person to form a wall of amnesia between them and the traumatic memory, as to better cope with the traumatic experience. This dissociative amnesia makes it difficult for a person to be able to distinguish fact from fiction within their own traumatic memories (see here). PTSD can blur the lines between what feels like a real memory and a dream. It’s impossible to remember details of everything that has ever happened to you, but when a person struggles with PTSD or has dealt with trauma, the realities of traumatic memories might be blurred with details the person implemented to fill in the blanks. The brain is attempting to salvage sanity in the moment of trauma, resulting in the later questioning of What is real and what is false.
As a collection of nonfiction, some passages written like fiction, How to Sit is very engaging and story-like. A lot of the memoir includes digging into memories and going along with Coleman on her timeline-bouncing journey, uncovering trauma and beginning to process it. Many parts of the collection read like an internal monologue. The idea of fact versus fiction in terms of memories connects readers to the writing, allowing the audience to question along with Coleman in her healing journey. She finds truth in her memories by writing, “If this were fiction, we would’ve gotten to this part by now.”.
Coleman’s writing in How to Sit is moving and relatable. Reading this memoir, I unearthed feelings within myself that I may not have realized were so strong. Some of Coleman’s descriptions of sexual assault and the shame she felt from the mother figures in her life regarding who she was pained me to read. I didn’t understand why I felt so personally affected. The things I read in this memoir surely didn’t happen to me. We came from two completely different backgrounds. But the more I read and the more I heard Tyrese’s voice echoing her broken past, I realized that even though I didn’t relate to the exact circumstances, I related to the feelings. Reading this memoir is revolutionary to those who feel as though there is a fog around their own childhood memories. It allows you to reach inward and discover your own fact versus fiction if you so choose.
After reading this collection, I felt more willing to dig into my own past and start on my own healing journey. Coleman bravely shares her truth and poses the idea that the past we remember is just as important as what really happened. She explores the idea of fiction versus nonfiction in her own life and memories and eloquently expresses how this blurred line has affected her healing process. She shares the reality of how she felt, the validity she has over her emotions despite some of her memories feeling false or story-like. Traumatic experiences don’t have to look a certain way. What matters is that it affected you. What matters is how you go forward into healing.
Coleman, Tyrese L. How to Sit. Mason Jar Press, 2018.
Rachel Vinyard is an emerging author from Maryland and the fall 2021 publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She is working toward a BA in English at Towson University and has been published in its literary magazine Grub Street. She was previously the fiction editor of Grub Street and hopes to continue editing in the future. Rachel is also a mental health advocate and aims to spread awareness of mental health issues through literature. You can find her on Twitter @RikkiTikkiSavvi and on Instagram @merridian.official.
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