Creative Nonfiction (Course Guide / Lisa Heise)

Humorist David Sedaris does not pull any punches when he writes about his family's quirks, but he also "mocks himself and explores cross-cultural absurdities." His wry and insightful observations about daily life, tales of growing up, and the alienated angst of feeling different have won radio audiences and book readers alike. | Biography - Gale in Context (Library Database)

A biography is provided on American humorist, writer and playwright David Sedaris. Topics include his personal background, education and analysis of his works including the short story "Barrel Fever" and "Me Talk Pretty One Day." It elaborates how Sedaris employ humor in various emotional situations especially in stories about death and dying. | Critical Survey of American Literature. 12/1/2016, p2702-2705 | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database

"The night before his ninety-fifth-birthday party, my father fell while turning around in his kitchen. My sister Lisa and her husband, Bob, dropped by hours later to hook up his new TV and discovered him on the floor, disoriented and in pain. He fell again after they righted him, so an ambulance was called. At the hospital, they met up with our sister Gretchen, and with Amy, who'd just flown in from New York to attend the party, which was now cancelled. "It was really weird," she said when we spoke on the phone the following morning. "Dad thought Lisa was Mom, and when the doctor asked him where he was he answered, 'Syracuse'—where he went to college. Then he got mad and said, 'You're sure asking a lot of questions.' As if that's not normal for a doctor. I think he thought this was just some guy he was talking to." | New Yorker. 1/7/2019, Vol. 94 Issue 43, p18-22. | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database)

"Something about a car running over a policeman and a second officer being injured. This is my assessment of a news story broadcast on the television in my father's room at Springmoor, the retirement community where he's spent the past three years in the assisted living section." | New Yorker. 8/9/2021, Vol. 97 Issue 23, p26-29. 4p | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database)

"Grow up in North Carolina and it's hard to get too attached to a beach house, knowing, as you do, that it's on borrowed time.". | New Yorker. 12/2/2019, Vol. 95 Issue 38, p20-24. 5p | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database)

"Throughout the worst of the pandemic, I, like everyone, thought of the many things I'd failed to appreciate back when life was normal: Oh, to be handed an actual restaurant menu; to stand so close to a stranger that you can read the banal text messages that are obviously more important to him than his toddler stumbling off the curb and out into traffic. | New Yorker. 4/4/2022, Vol. 98 Issue 7, p27-31. 5p. | Literary Reference Center Plus (EBSCO) (Library Database)

"It's July in West Sussex, and I'm at a garden party, talking with a lawyer who has two sons in their early twenties. The oldest is living in Scotland, and the other, a sullen college student, is home for the month, tearing everyone's head off. "So, do you have children?" she asks. | New Yorker. 5/17/2021, Vol. 97 Issue 12, p20-22. | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database)

"I’m not sure how it is in small families, but in large ones relationships tend to shift over time. You might be best friends with one brother or sister, then two years later it might be someone else. Then it’s likely to change again, and again after that. It doesn’t mean that you’ve fallen out with the person you used to be closest to but that you’ve merged into someone else’s lane, or had him or her merge into yours. Trios form, then morph into quartets before splitting into teams of two. The beauty of it is that it’s always changing."| New Yorker. 3/28/2016, Vol. 92 Issue 7, p34-37. 4p | Literary Reference Center Plus (EBSCO) (Library Database)

"On the flight to Raleigh, I sneezed, and the cough drop I'd been sucking on shot from my mouth, ricocheted off my folded tray table, and landed, as I remember it, in the lap of the woman beside me, who was asleep and had her arms folded across her chest. | New Yorker. 6/13/2005, Vol. 81 Issue 17, p88-92. 3p. | Literary Reference Center Plus (Library Database)