Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery
Margaret Nowaczyk
June 18, 2024
186 pages | ISBN 978-1-989496-90-9
In Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery Margaret Nowaczyk explores different facets of her life, from listening to the radio dramas of her childhood in Communist Poland to her work now as a pediatric clinical geneticist. These are beautifully crafted essays, full of hard-won truths and insights, generously shared with the reader. Whether struggling with English as a teenaged refugee or documenting the process of permanent hair dye, Nowaczyk moves seamlessly between scientific and personal writing, bridging the gap between these two areas with elegance and humour. Marrow Memory is an invitation to the reader to marvel in the unexpected beauties of human experience and the ability of language to capture that.
Advance Praise
"The essays in Marrow Memory dazzled and moved me with their erudition and sensuousness, their humour and their breadth in subject. Whether it’s writing about Tay–Sachs disease, life in Communist Poland or her peasant ancestors, Margaret Nowaczyk never once falters in making her personal fascinations feel vital and relevant." – Kevin Chong, author of The Double Life of Benson Yu
"Fascinating, sensitive and wholly absorbing, these essays explore the mechanics of memory, how memory not only fixes events in time, but also alters those events into story. Margaret Nowaczyk incorporates her scientific background and her precise imagination to bring us these deep and multi-layered excursions into her past and those of her patients. The result is a rich and rewarding journey to the present." – Wayne Grady, author of The Good Father
“Marrow Memory is sinewy, sharp and seductive. Margaret Nowaczyk’s new collection of essays meditates on everything from molecules, monsters and medical school to the marvels of the everyday – from the miracle of each tiny membrane of the ear vibrating to take in late-night transistor radio waves from a childhood bedroom in Communist Poland to the pleasures and pains of sexual freedom to the hues of blue in Matisse’s Tahitian seascapes. With a geneticist’s eye for uncanny detail, the marrow at the root of family and selfhood is revealed with grit and grace. How is a human made? this collection asks, as the speaker pours over anatomy textbooks, assesses infant genetic disparities and recognizes her own familiar whorls of DNA in the pleasure of perfectly laundered sheets, the teal-and-orange colour of the Beck taxi her father drives through a 1980s’ Toronto recession as a new immigrant and her sons’ long strides through the grasses of her ancestors’ fields. This collection models the alchemy of what the personal essay does best – through the stories of another’s unfamiliar life, the reader finds affinity.” – Heather Jessup, author of This Is Not a Hoax: Unsettling Truth in Canadian Culture and The Lightning Field
"These essays shine with candour and insight. In lively prose, rich with empathy and detail, Margaret Nowaczyk recounts moments of discovery in her life as a daughter, lover, mother, geneticist, reader, traveller, writer and seeker. Marrow Memory finds beauty in the heart of the familiar and the extraordinary, revealing the essence of a memorable life." – Lorri Neilsen Glenn, author of Following the River: Traces of Red River Women
Reviews
Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery by Margaret Nowaczyk (Carrie Stanton, the Miramichi Reader, 27/10/2024)
"Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery by Margaret Nowaczyk is sure to touch its reader directly where it’s aimed to do so — deep within the bone and directly into the heart."
What’s Bred in the Bone: A Review of Margaret Nowaczyk’s Marrow Memory (Stephanie Cesca, PRISM International, 09/10/2024)
"Reading Marrow Memory was an immersive experience that drew this reader in, kept her engaged and impressed her with its captivating prose."
Review: Marrow Memory by Margaret Nowaczyk (Michael Greenstein, The Seaboard Review, 10/06/2024)
"Marrow Memory balances the personal and professional – Nowaczyk’s Polish past filled with teenage desire, and her present expertise specializing in pediatric genetics."
Marrow Memory (Sara Hailstone, Sara Hailstone, 01/06/2024)
"Dr. Nowaczyk presents an organic and unique authorial voice that glows in her knowledge of science, memory and encounter with nature resulting in a beautiful narrative of self-exploration like no other text I have read."
Interviews
E403 with MARGARET NOWACZYK (Jamie Tennant, Get Lit, 08/08/2024)
Margaret Nowaczyk is back on the show to talk about her collection Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery.
Margaret Nowaczyk Explores the Unexpected Beauty of Being Human in Marrow Memories: Essays of Discovery (Open Book, 31/07/2024)
"I always strove for the deepest meanings and truths. In doing so, I unearthed several obsessions/passions that have played a big part in my life. These are: the (un)reliability of memory – a very important question while writing a memoir or essays based on one’s life; the effects that painful experiences and trauma and ancestral legacies have on our minds and bodies; and the role language plays in our lives and what happens when you lose that language."
Margaret Nowaczyk | Marrow Memory (Brian Crombie, "The Brian Crombie Hour," 05/07/2024)
Brian Crombie interviews Margaret about her book.
POWER Q & A WITH MARGARET NOWACZYK (River Street Writing, 03/07/2024)
"Simply, without training in narrative medicine, I would not have become a writer. There would have been no stories, no essays, and no memoir."
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #30 (Emma Rhodes, The Miramichi Reader, 09/06/2024)
"Maya Angelou famously said: there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you, so here I am, telling my stories and hoping they will be heard."
Featured Writer: Margaret Nowaczyk (Liisa Kovala, Women Writing, 28/05/2024)
“Every writer has to make time and place for their writing, if they want to keep writing. The trick is that 'time and place' changes as your life changes, so you always have to find new and inventive ways to steal from your life.”
Articles
TMR’s Best Books of 2024: Nonfiction (Emma Rhodes, the Miramichi Reader, 18/12/2024)
Margaret's book is named as a standout work of nonfiction in 2024.
A Year in Reading: The Best Books of 2024 (The Hamilton Review of Books, 16/12/2024)
Margaret's book is included in this year-end roundup!
In our bones: Exploring where memories begin (Jessica Rose, Hamilton City Magazine, 29/09/2024)
"'I sublimated the writing desire into medical writing, research papers, and medical articles,' she says. 'Then, in 2006, I was hospitalized for serious depression, and after that, I decided that maybe it’s time to start taking creative writing courses.'"
Polish-Canadian Authors (Kasia Jaronczyk, 49th Shelf, 05/07/2024)
Margaret is included in this roundup of fiction and non-fiction by wonderful Polish-Canadian authors.
Thirty-four books to read this summer (Emily Donaldson, the Globe and Mail, 13/06/2024)
Margaret's essay collection makes this great roundup!
What We're Reading: Staff Writers' Picks, Spring 2024 (Hamilton Review of Books, 05/04/2024)
It's wonderful to see Margaret Nowaczyk on this great list.
Most Anticipated: Our 2024 Nonfiction Spring Preview (49th Shelf, 07/02/2024)
Margaret's book makes this roundup of most anticipated nonfiction.
About the Author
Born in Poland, Margaret Nowaczyk is a pediatric clinical geneticist and a professor at McMaster University and DeGroote School of Medicine. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Canadian, Polish and American literary magazines and anthologies. She lives in Hamilton, ON, with her husband and two sons. Visit her website at www.margaretnowaczyk.ca.
Other Titles by This Author
Chasing Zebras: A Memoir of Genetics, Mental Health and Writing (2021)
