Jennifer Lang’s new memoir 

Landed: A  yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses addresses many themes common to her previous book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature, including dislocation, nostalgia, insecurity, and the desire to find a place to belong amid multiple international moves. And, like Places, it employs interesting literary devices: lists, poems, thought bubbles, and a true-false test. They almost read like part I and part II; Landed begins in 2011 where Places ends. 

This second memoir, published 13 months after the first, goes even farther with its introspective questioning, though, as a yoga friend of Lang’s suggests that the author’s feeling adrift could be just as much due to struggles within herself as with her bi-national lifestyle and disagreements with her French husband. And we see more of Jennifer’s own work and practices to carve out her own space, within the chapters on yoga poses and classes interspersed between anecdotes of her married life and also within her account of her writing life. That includes teaching memoir writing classes in Israel as well as writing this memoir. 

This book humanizes a part of the world that all too often makes headlines for the wrong reasons. It also tells the universal human story of a woman balancing concern for her husband, adult children, and aging parents, who have struggles all their own in Landed.

Jennifer Lang’s Landed is available here through Vine Leaves Press.