Saturday Morning Serial
Part Deux: Next Time, same as the first
or, Why am I posting my memoir again?
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Book description: Next Time, a strong woman under the gaslight
The exploitation of adjunct faculty is one of academia’s nastiest little secrets. And it wasn’t until twenty years of hard teaching labor had passed that I began to realize: in my career there was no next time, like I’d been promised. No promotions, no raises, no opportunities. No health insurance. It also hit me at this same time that my husband had been doing the exact same thing to me that my academic and theatrical careers had been: expecting me to give everything, returning nothing but empty promises of a Next Time that never existed.
Next Time draws parallels between the gaslighting abuse I’ve suffered through the same twenty years by a husband, the theatre world, and a career in academia. Throughout the dozen sections of this memoir, I weave together the abuses of three central and powerful forces in my life, draw out the common themes that unite them, and reflect on how this sort of thing can happen even to a strong, interesting woman. I then tell the story of my own emergence from these abusive systems, and offer a narrative of hope for other people caught in similar, intertwined cycles of personal and institutional abuse.
aka Saturday Morning Serial, a sequel serial
I’ve decided I’m going to re-post each chapter of my memoir here to the Zuko’s Musings branch called Saturday Morning Serial, again. What’s that? I’ve already done so, you say, and it’s all up there in an archive decorated with images of bowls of breakfast cereal, you say? It’s true. But I’m going to be sharing them all again. Why? Well,
It’s a story that I think will help a lot of people; the more that can read it, the better. It’s already saved a couple lives that I know of, and it can only get closer to book publication, the more readers read it online. But beyond that, I truly want my story to be shared as far and wide as possible–that’s the most important part. Especially in the political world that is now ours after the 2024 elections, we need my story (and my comments on same, and my recounting of what I’ve been up to since) more than ever.
I’d also like to further talk about the psychological processes one goes through under a gaslighter and how they may function differently now. And how I personally got away. Hope-punk is a powerful thing, especially these days. When I first finished the memoir, I was still pretty close to the abusive nonsense that I relate in the piece. Now, it’s been a little longer away from all of that (a couple years since my own Big Quit that I recount in the Prologue and Epilogue of the book), and I have more to add to these stories, here in my new life. More hope to be punk about. And so this time around, I will be posting a parallel commentary, behind-the-scenes, gloss addition to each chapter. There’s a continuing dialogue about these events, methinks, and I feel like it’ll be a lot of fun to reread and get deep into it.
For details about how and why I began, continued, and decided to Stack this memoir, go back and read my introductory post on the original run, called Quit Lit. The basics here remain true: the creation process of course, and my rewarding work with Herb Childress, also of course, but I want to emphasize how much I do still desire to see it become a book. Like, on paper. But that’s secondary to my desire to help others in these days of despair by telling my story, including The Way I Live Now, after all this. I do feel intensely that this story has the potential to help other people in similar situations of abuse, or who feel trapped, isolated, and otherwise alone. You’re not alone. Here’s what happened to me.
This time around, I want also to share weekly bibliographies of works that echo and talk about the main concepts that appear in each chapter of my memoir, so let me know if you know of and love any (you can look ahead in the memoir to see what’s coming). Or if you’ve written some aligned works yourself. And do please hop into the comments to add to my gloss and help me polish it to a bright sheen. …That sounds weird. But you know what I mean.
Okay, so. Here’s the plan:
Each Saturday, I’ll reshare chapters of my memoir, one by one, in order.
Along with the chapter in your inbox, you’ll find a shortish commentary/gloss on said chapter, complete with backstory, reflections, and a short list of sources for further readings. (Once we get to my appendix, which is all an annotated bibliography itself, I don’t actually know what I’ll do, but I guess we’ll find out, won’t we.)
Saturday Morning Serial will remain free to read, but do consider upgrading to paid, so you can support me and my work in this ever more precarious world. If you can’t afford it, don't sweat it.
TODAY’S BIBLIOGRAPHY
Childress, Herb. The Adjunct Underclass. U. of Chicago Press, 2019. (Link)
Dolezal, Josh. The Recovering Academic. Available:
Karr, Mary. The Art of Memoir. Harper Perennial, 2016. (Link)