My Unsentimental Education

by Debra Monroe

  “The Family History of the Grosskopfs and Schades in Fayette County” was scary in reverse, a road I’d started to take, then turned back. I said, “I’m going to throw this in the trash,” realizing that even if I got rid of the paper record I wasn’t getting rid of the history, none of it, none of my irregular past, evidence I’d had a vagrant heart but a sense of direction too, an inclination toward the dark side, but the alchemy of luck had converted it to light. Gary, still watching TV, said, “You mean the recycling.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I dedicate this book to the memory of Kit Ward, who first encouraged me to write it. My best thanks to David Meischen, my hard-core, astute, page-by-page reader. Thank you as well to David McGlynn, Donna Johnson, John Dufresne, Shen Christenson, Scott Blackwood, and John Griswold. Thank you to Kathryn Lang, who taught me so much (”Debra, this is your life!”). Thank you to Summer Wood and Bob Shacochis for help in the dog days of summer. I thank editors of the following publications in which excerpts and sometimes bits or traces of this book were previously published: Longreads.com; the American Scholar; the Morning News; the Southern Review; the Florida Review; RACAonline; Inside Higher Ed. Thank you to my absolutely wonderful agent, Jane Gelfman, and to Lisa Bayer and Elizabeth Crowley.

  To Gary, Fraiser, and Marie: XXOO.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For the sake of other people’s privacy, I’ve changed some names, as I’ve clearly indicated in the book. Sometimes, when a name was too ideal, too allegorical, I just couldn’t, as I’ve also indicated. For the same reason—because I’m telling my story, not anyone else’s—I’ve changed some identifying details about some secondary characters.