Seattle Culture
Memoirs of the Mat
Two local writers breathe humor into yoga with funny personal takes.
By Seattle Mag July 14, 2011
This article originally appeared in the August 2011 issue of Seattle magazine.
Seattleites tend to approach yoga with an intense earnestness, so how refreshing to find two practitioners who bring a critical, humorous eye to the practice.
In December, local writer Claire Dederer published her funny and insightful Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses, a memoir of Seattle marriage and motherhood, in which she both skewers and owns up to the Northwest liberal demographic.
Dederer approaches the yoga culture with skepticism, but can’t help acknowledging how it has made a difference in her life.
This month, Seattle performer and Huffington Post blogger Suzanne Morrison releases her own yoga memoir, Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment. Based on her highly successful one-woman show of the same title, Yoga Bitch traces Morrison’s struggles with enlightenment as she follows a beloved yoga teacher to Bali and gets both more (ant infestations) and less (urine therapy) than she bargained for. Despite her hilarious observations, Morrison achieves a certain awakening, too. Both books are much more fun than the crow pose. B.D.