A S YOU KEEP pointing out in your comments, sisters are slices of a whole tale, the whole tale being the story of a family. Points of view can be very pointed, of course, which is why sisters can sometimes be both irksome and essential at the very same time. After all, they know the other side of our stories, the coin flipped over.
One friend of ours recently told us about a sister of hers who is the story-teller of the bunch and who recently related a tale in her characteristic entertaining way, making all the other sisters laugh and howl until another sister blurted out, “I love that story. But it’s mine! That happened to me, not you!” The story-telling sister had co-opted the whole thing, making herself the center of the tale.
Now that’s a good sister story, yes?
We love story-telling sisters, particularly if we can hear both sides at once. In the September issue of More magazine, the Maynard sisters, Joyce and Rona, did just that, taking on the dangerous territory of dual memoir, and handling it beautifully.
In fact, we are flattered to say that Rona is one of our readers, posting a comment on The Sister Project in our very first week. It was lovely to see her there, and to link to her blog, where you can read her take on the Maynard family, which provides another side to the story told by Joyce, in More. Read up.
This isn’t the first time the Roach Sisters and the Maynard Sisters have coincided. Margaret and Joyce worked at The New York Times concurrently, if memory serves, and who knows what other threads connect all of us.
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