Cait West joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in and leaving Christian patriarchy, indoctrination, identifying and writing about the rifts she felt in herself and her family, gender oppression, using geology as a metaphor, moving from memoir in essays to a more linear form, ethical and legal concerns when writing about others, coming to grips with abuse, purity culture, and her memoir Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy.

Also in this episode:

-protecting anonymity in those we write about

-trauma therapy

-protecting ourselves by taking breaks when writing 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

-Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies

-Flesh and Blood by N. West Moss

-Wiving by Caityln Myer

Cait West is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work has been published in The Revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Genre, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse, and cohosts the podcast Survivors Discuss. Her debut memoir, Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy, releases on April 30, 2024.

Connect with Cait:

Website: https://www.caitwest.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitwestwrites

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@caitwestwrites

Substack: https://caitwest.substack.com/

Get Cait’s Book: https://www.caitwest.com/book

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers