Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

gwen — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

I’ve always wondered what prompts people to write memoirs. It’s one thing to be a celebrity riding the wave of success, but quite another to be a regular Jane baring it all for the judgment of strangers. As a critic for publications as prestigious as The New York Times, Claire Dederer is no stranger to criticism; nor does she seem to fear it. In her first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, she bravely opens the cloak of privacy to reveal herself to the world. I suppose she is a writer who was ready to tell her own story for once, as opposed to reviewing those of others. Full of sincerity and love, this book is a cleverly written homage to her family, her friends, her marriage, and of course, her yoga.

Those of you turned off by “yoga” in the title should reconsider, as this is nothing like the New Age self-indulgence that has given the ancient tradition a bad reputation. Instead, Dederer loosely ties her yoga practice to the peaks and valleys of her life. In each chapter she recalls anecdotes and tells them in the context of a different yoga pose. This structural device offers comic relief and surprising tangents like this: “Back in college, we used to have a silly rubric: Never have sex with anyone who doesn’t like Van Morrison…based on the fact that [he] is embarrassing, and sex is embarrassing.” Then onto the next paragraph: “And Lion was embarrassing. It made you feel like Van Morrison, all uncontrollable noises and strange eruptions.” These are also moments for the reader to self-reflect, and this is where her writing is most profound and relatable.

Apart from being an extremely talented writer, she is a poster child for the ultimate alternative generation. In typical Northwest grunge fashion, Dederer is admirably cool without trying. Her book is packed with dry wit, self-deprecation, and cultural references that I only understand because of my older, Gen-X sister. After enough time self-reflecting in Seattle, a city known for its constant self-perfecting, Dederer and her husband move to the mountains of Boulder. This is when she dives into the implications of her childhood, the fine line between selfishness and personal happiness, and the pros and cons of moving back home.

These universal and common issues make for a fascinating memoir that only a serious writer could pull off successfully. From beginning to end, this book carries the mantra that life can be as bizarre as putting your feet behind your head, and also as rewarding. Paraphrasing Patanjali in one of his Yoga Sutras: Yoga becomes firmly grounded when it is practiced for a long time, without a break, and with sincere devotion. I’d say that’s true of most good things in life, and why Dederer would choose yoga as the unifying theme for a book as dear to her heart as this. At one point she reflects, “What happens when a generation of children grows up with all these comings and goings; when a generation of children grows up with parents who want to be free, and who think that freedom is movement?” Well, Claire Dederer has personally shown us just exactly what happens, and why she chose to dig her heels in and never give up on her practice.

We sometimes duplicate a review. Click here for another writer's take on _Poser.

Written by: Katy Pine, February 23rd 2011

Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

farhana — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Claire Dederer

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In Poser, Claire Dederer takes on two of the most en vogue trends for young women in the early twenty-first century: yoga and attachment parenting. After a liberated childhood, having been raised in Seattle in the 1970s and 1980s by parents who embraced many of the hippie ideals of the 1960s, Dederer took those lessons of freedom to heart. She, like many others in her generation, went to college but delayed getting a 9-5 job, marriage, and childrearing into her third decade.

Having settled down, she quickly found herself closer to the 1950s, with a husband who was the sole breadwinner except for the emphasis on organic food and co-sleeping and public breastfeeding. Thanks to a back problem and subtle social pressure from her fellow Supermoms, Claire decided to try yoga.

The book is cleverly divided into chapters based on yoga poses that the author was mastering. Throughout her struggle with balance and strength and patience in the yoga studio, the reader follows Dederer as these trials and successes translate into the rest of her life. Without sounding trite or cliché, she manages to draw the reader in to the lessons she is learning about being present in her life in every moment without worrying about perfection—admittedly a difficult concept for someone who grew up being told over and over again that she could, and should, be anything she wanted.

The cast of characters includes two children, Claire’s overworked and underpaid husband, and an assortment of immediate family members who are never more than a stone’s throw away. Each of these relationships shifts ever so slightly as the author becomes more comfortable with her own discomfort, both in various yoga studios and in her everyday life.

Many mothers will immediately identify with her visceral need to measure up to the other mothers in her circle and be perfect and her message comes across in a refreshingly humorous but not self-deprecating way. Whether or not you engage in a yoga practice, there are lessons to be learned from this book.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, December 7th 2010