Altar or Alter: Six Memoirs at the Intersection of Marriage, Divorce, Gender, and Sexuality

If you need to laugh about divorce so that you don’t cry, this is the book to pick up. Many of us had to face realities we were not prepared for when the COVID lockdown hit. For Koul, she faced a string of, as the title suggests, sucker punches, including a divorce and a parent’s cancer diagnosis. This book is especially interesting paired with Koul’s 2017 debut essay collection, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.

The author of this memoir had a life-changing event while on jury duty. After finding herself attracted to a female lawyer, her world, which at the time involved being married to a man and parenting a toddler, turned upside down. And if you want the really frank details of what that tumult was like, this book does not spare any.

While Kwame Alexander is known for gripping novels in verse aimed at younger readers, he is also a memoirist. This book, with its unorthodox structure, delves into marriage, divorce, and gender. In it, he seeks to know his father better while also reflecting on the important roles women have had in his life. This book expresses raw emotion through evocative poetry and other writing forms.

During author Anelise Chen’s divorce, her mother sent her a typo text message telling her to “clam down.” So she took it to heart. What could she learn about clams that could relate to her own situation? What does it mean to retreat or re-emerge? I adore books that pull on natural history in creative ways, and this one is especially insightful.

One way to explore one’s sexuality within a marriage is to open that marriage up to other partners. That’s what Molly Roden Winter did, and she takes us along for the ride. This book is quite divisive among readers. The best way to tell whether you find this book’s honesty insufferable or insightful is to read it for yourself.

Graphic memoirs are so special to me. This one, a companion of sorts to L. Nichols’ Flocks (though it stands alone), reflects on the author’s identity as a trans man. Being in a relationship with a partner who did not offer sufficient support for the author’s exploration of gender is one of the threads of the narrative. The book wades through sensitive topics like fatphobia and childhood abuse, but maintains a stirring sense of self-determination.