Why ‘All These Wonders’ is my new favorite

My new favorite book is “The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Universe.”

I’ve been a fan of The Moth StorySLAMs since this nonprofit’s inception 20 years ago. These campfire-esque events conducted at cities around the country are celebrations of storytelling and draw me in like, well, a moth to a flame. Ten brave volunteers step onstage and tell five to six minute true, first-person stories around a designated theme for the night, then audience judges score them and a winner is declared. Being a Moth storyteller is on my bucket list but despite what Anne Lamott, the spiritual leader of writers, says (“If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”) I’d rather wait for a couple of my “characters” to die before I sign up to tell my story.

In the meantime, I think a lot about what makes a good story. You could argue a lot of points and perhaps the criteria are different reader to reader, moment to moment, but for me the difference between good and great is the storyteller’s willingness to be vulnerable and expose a deeper truth. These are the stories that I connect with, whether its literary fiction, memoir, or even a thriller.

Personal essays like The Moth’s would seem to be the ultimate truth telling, but often, as Albert Camus has suggested, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” There is an exquisite alchemy that occurs when writing transcends “just the facts, ma’am” of nonfiction and a greater truth can sometimes be illuminated through fiction.

A book on the history of war or the anthropology of migration may offer the reader the facts, but it’s novels like the haunting “Exit West” that transcend. Part-time Californian Mohsin Hamid’s beautiful, fictional universe of two lovers in a war-torn country who are forced into exile through magical doors offers readers an up-close and personal view of the lives effected by these circumstances but without pedantics and untethered by politics. An exposé on the inner city crack epidemic of SoCal may explain the “what, who, where, and why” but it’s novels like L.A.’s Ryan Gattis’ moving thriller “Safe” that help us understand the difficult choices of people just like us, just living different circumstances. In fact, it was Gattis’ last novel that confirmed Camus’ assertion for me: I already knew the history of the 1992 L.A. riots, but after reading All Involved I finally understood the truth of what happened.

And then there’s memoir, the genre that is often caught blurring the lines between fact and fiction but still always tells the author’s truth. That’s not an easy task. I was reminded of the difficulty when reading Roxane Gay’s extraordinary memoir “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.” Gay’s story of being gang-raped as a child and her subsequent life hiding behind her “fat” is insanely brave and beautiful and painfully honest. Gay seems to completely expose herself then, suddenly, she stops short in one sentence, referencing something but refusing to go there. I found myself desperately wanting more, even after all she’d given. Later, Debra Ginsberg — the San Diego, Calif., author of three great memoirs — explained to me that even the most truthful writers are faced with the challenge of knowing what they are willing to write about, and what they’re not.

We must still thrive for the truth as writers and as readers, though. Not just the facts but the greater meaning of our experiences, for that’s what enables us to understand and connect with each other and ourselves: the difference between good and great.

And in a summer plagued by alternative facts, fake news, and hard-to-believe realities, all of these truth-filled books are a welcome respite.

Allison K. Hill is president and CEO of Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena and Book Soup in West Hollywood, Calif., and a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post book section. You can reach Hill at www.AllisonKHill.com or readingalovestory.tumblr. com.

COURTESY PHOTO