Runaway, Erin Keane
Runaway, Erin Keane
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Runaway
Notes on the Myths That Made Me

Author: Erin Keane

Narrator: Erin Keane

Unabridged: 6 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/11/2022

Synopsis

From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell.In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six.Through a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What’s true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are?Whether it’s talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell—both personal and pop cultural—create us.

About Erin Keane

Erin Keane is a critic, poet, essayist, and journalist. She’s the author of several collections of poetry, and editor of The Louisville Anthology. Her writing has appeared in many publications and anthologies, and in 2018 she coproduced and cohosted the limited audio series These Miracles Work. She is editor-in-chief at Salon, where she has worked since 2014, and teaches in the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nathan

This book blends a lot of different aspects. It’s a book of internal questions about family and the self, a reckoning of family and culture - it’s memoir, in essays, about someone else. It doesn’t always connect, and maybe the threads could’ve been pulled a little bit more, at least committing to on......more

Goodreads review by Renata

hmmmm I picked this up because I knew the author vaguely through the Louisville Moth scene. Otherwise I might not have read it, and I think overall it might appeal more to a Gen X audience. There's a lot of specific pop culture unpacking and references that I only somewhat got--a LOT of talk about h......more

Goodreads review by Avigail

I couldn’t put this down. The story of Keane’s mother has the adventure—ok, yes, the middle class voyeurism—of The Glass Castle and Educated, but the perspective of a critic. Less pathos, more feminism. I do think that at times it falls prey to the ouroboros of overshadowing women by critiquing men......more

Quotes

“Fascinating…Memoirs this smart and absorbing don’t comes around all the time.” NPR

“Her memoir expands beyond the personal to cast that same piercing gaze on cultural myths, from the obsession with nymphets to the demonization of runaways.” Los Angeles Times

“Who gets labeled a ‘missing kid’ and who a ‘runaway’?…[Keane] challenges readers to examine the gendered dismissal of those we call runaways.” Booklist (starred review)

“This eagle-eyed inquiry hits the mark.” Publishers Weekly

“Analyzes her mother’s past as a runaway in the context of popular culture’s tendency to prioritize men’s stories over those of women.” Kirkus Reviews

“Keane brings critical shrewdness to the vision-obscuring status quo of patriarchy.” Sadie Dupuis, author of Mouthguard

“I’m not able to pin down my own life in essays as clear and beautiful as Erin Keane has here. But reading Runaway time and again will be the learning and motivation I need. That we all do.” Kevin Smokler, author of Brat Pack America

“Keane is a brilliant storyteller, who bravely walks us through her beautifully complicated family dynamic, with prose that is razor sharp, informative, and powerful enough to make us reexamine ourselves and everything we subscribe to. I highly recommend.” D. Watkins, author of Black Boy Smile

Awards

  • Los Angeles Times Pick
  • Millions.com Pick
  • NPR Best Book of the Year
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