海角大神

Hold your breath, steady your stance, and dive in. That鈥檚 what Lidia Yuknavitch did as a teenage contender for the US Olympic swimming team. And that鈥檚 what her readers have been doing since Yuknavitch lost her swimming scholarship to drinking and drugging, enrolled in the University of Oregon, studied with Ken Kesey, got her PhD in English Literature, got sober, and reinvented herself as a writer who never stops reinventing writing.

鈥淚n water, like in books,鈥� she wrote in her 2011 memoir听"The Chronology of Water," 鈥測ou can leave your life.鈥澛�

Now 54 and living in Portland, Oregon with her third husband and first son, Yuknavitch teaches writing at聽Eastern Oregon University while continuing her deep dive into her own brand of genre- and gender-bending writing, and living. A lover of both men and women, including the transgressive writer Kathy Acker, to whom Yuknavitch dedicated her second story collection, Yuknavitch specializes in essays and books that blur the distinctions between memoir and fiction and essay, sex, violence and art, mind, body and heart, male and female and other, and good, bad, and other.

Case in point: Yuknavitch鈥檚 fifth book, The Misfit鈥檚 Manifesto. Based on her 2016 TED Talk, 鈥淭he Beauty of Being a Misfit,鈥� which has garnered more than two million views, this small book roars in Yuknavitch鈥檚 big voice, arguing in favor of compassion, justice, and love for the misfits among us who choose (or are forced) to take the long view visible only from society鈥檚 margins.

鈥淚鈥檓 talking about how some of us experience that altered state of missing any kind of fitting in so profoundly,鈥� Yuknavitch explains in the book鈥檚 introduction, 鈥渢hat we nearly can鈥檛 make it in life.鈥�

Calmly yet passionately, graphically but without self-pity, Yuknavitch drives her readers full-speed into the eye of the storm that was her violent, truly awful childhood. The beauty with which she describes her family鈥檚 ugliness; the connections she maps between the horrors of her parents鈥� kitchen table and the horrors of the wider world embodies the book鈥檚 thesis: that misfits like Yuknavitch are uniquely qualified to transform the glittering shards of their shattered selves into diamonds.

鈥淚n my house, my father鈥檚 rage incarcerated my mother, my sister, and me,鈥� Yuknavitch writes. 鈥淗is abuse threaded through our bodies, through our language, through every experience we could imagine, until that abuse seemed like part of everyday life鈥� I can imagine the terrible macro version of my micro story. Consider for a moment the legions of refugees fleeing the wars we鈥檝e made worldwide: How will they fit into not only new countries, but also the stories we tell ourselves about identity and unity?鈥�

More memoir than manifesto, brimming with the kind of stern, hopeful self-helpish life-lessons that would come off as Dr. Phil-lian in the hands of a lesser writer, the book鈥檚 medium is its message. By the time we turn its final pages, we have been gently but firmly persuaded that life鈥檚 worst events are bad, yes, but they鈥檙e also good.

鈥淢isfits have a unique relationship to their own failures,鈥� Yuknavitch writes. 鈥淚f we are lucky, we come to understand them as portals. You heard me, portals. As in a doorway, gate, or other entrance, an opening.鈥�

Lest we question the author鈥檚 qualifications to assess the pros and cons of failures, Yuknavitch provides this wrenching resum茅 item. 鈥淢y beautiful little girl died the day she was born, as I鈥檝e mentioned, and so, in a way, my story breached forever. The grief that came from that experience wrenched me out of the traditional womanhood plotline forever. The depression I entered was unholy.

鈥淎nd yet,鈥� Yuknavitch writes, 鈥渇rom my daughter鈥檚 death, eventually, I became a writer. The first failed marriage, the first failed motherhood, they weren鈥檛 just horrible failures. They were portals. Even if they felt like deadly crucibles at the time.鈥�

Meredith Maran is the author of a dozen books, most recently the memoir "The New Old Me."