About the Book
A candid and cathartic exploration of pandemic life, from family to pop culture to healthcare—and beyond
At a time when so many are dealing with collective and personal grief, award-winning author and journalist Michele Weldon’s new collection of essays navigates the revelatory and upending nature of this extraordinary pandemic era through a lens of love and connection. Weldon explores pain and pleasure alike with emotional texture, empathy, wisdom, vulnerability, and humor. She interrogates moments of joy, despair, and triumph, offering readers the possibility for a richly cathartic experience. With honesty and agility, Weldon creates poignant intersections of her narrative with popular culture, history, media, news, consumerism, family traditions, and healthcare. Employing honest and daring language, Weldon examines the concepts of safety, importance of beloved objects, power of words, shift to remote relationships, concepts of feminism, betrayal of public lies, and more. Ultimately, with grace and heart, Weldon offers in these essays useful pathways toward framing this swath of time so that we might arrive at a sense of understanding, belonging, and peace with our new realities.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part One: Persons
Chapter 1: Caption Writer
Chapter 2: Children
Chapter 3: Positive Patients
Chapter 4: Old Ladies
Chapter 5: Feminists
Chapter 6: Partners
Chapter 7: Classmates
Chapter 8: Liars
Part Two: Places
Chapter 9: Latin Class
Chapter 10: Lakefront
Chapter 11: Kitchens
Chapter 12: Physical Therapy
Chapter 13: ICU
Chapter 14: Shame
Chapter 15: Zoom
Chapter 16: Within
Part Three: Things
Chapter 17: Pink Couches
Chapter 18: Watches
Chapter 19: Nicknames
Chapter 20: Shoes
Chapter 21: Sounds
Chapter 22: Soup
Chapter 23: Blue
Chapter 24: Breath
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Credits
About the Author :
Michele Weldon is a journalist and author of six award-winning nonfiction books and chapters in seven anthologies and is emerita faculty at Northwestern University’s Medill School for Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communication. Her work has appeared in CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, MSNBC, TIME, NBC Think, Slate, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Narratively, and more. She is a senior leader with The OpEd Project, a TEDx speaker, and a live storyteller.
Review :
“Michele Weldon has a tremendous capacity for life—for living fully, with intelligence, humor, originality, and reflection. In this essay collection, she gives us a vital and humanizing record of our present times.” —Rachel Jamison Webster, Author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family
“In The Time We Have, Michele Weldon explores the impact of the COVID pandemic on our day-to-day lives in beautiful and unexpected ways. These essays are rich in details and observations that made me shake my head in recognition. Weldon considers deeply all that was reshaped, reoriented, adapted, or transformed by our time in quarantine.” —Arlene Malinowski, playwright and solo artist
“Whether she's talking about the loss of a beloved brother or of her beloved shoe collection, Michele Weldon offers us a compassionate, kind, and generous way to try and make sense of the coronavirus pandemic, both individually and societally, and to consider the world we want moving forward. With an honest, humble and sometimes humorous reckoning of her own struggles and triumphs, Weldon invites us to explore our understanding of the human condition. A truly joyous read.” —Vicki Larson, author of Not Too Old for That
“How oddly comforting to closely observe, laugh at, and begin to understand what feels like myself, and my friends and family too, in Michele Weldon’s The Time We Have. Incredibly moving. Gorgeously written. Clever and complicated and life-affirming; if one good thing came out of the pandemic, it is books like this.” —Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times best-selling author of The Postmistress of Paris
"Michele Weldon has a tremendous capacity for life—for living fully, with intelligence, humor, originality, and reflection. In this essay collection, she gives us a vital and humanizing record of our present times."--Rachel Jamison Webster, Author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family
“Reading Michele Weldon is like spending a rainy afternoon with your best friend while sharing a few glasses of wine—but only if your best friend is smart, funny, thoughtful and inspiring. We all went through the pandemic, but Weldon paid attention and took notes. This bracing, eloquent, and moving collection is the glorious result.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Keller, author of Quitting: A Life Strategy
