README.txt, the highly-anticipated memoir from Chelsea Manning, published this week to a wave of media attention. Jordy Rosenberg for The Washington Post praises the “electrifying opening” of the memoir, adding: “README.txt serves as an insider confessional turned inside out for the 21st century. The perverse secret of our era, one that Manning details in multiple surreal encounters with military bureaucracy, is that everything is already known. Manning is canny in her refusal to simply embrace the confessional mode often demanded of trans writers and whistleblowers alike...Manning’s memoir may thus give us less, not more, of what we may think we know about her. But this is an artful refusal, and an important one…The narrative progression that unfolds over these pages forms a sublime arc.” Meanwhile, Margaret Sullivan for The New York Times Book Review writes: “Manning weaves together her role as a whistle-blower — utterly disillusioned by what she saw and experienced in the military — with her sad personal story…Manning’s memoir fills in some blanks and, most important, adds a searing personal element. The writing in README.txt is vivid, as its narrative moves from an Oklahoma childhood to community college in Maryland to an unpredictable decision to enlist — brought about partly by dire financial need — which eventually brought her to the Middle East.” Elsewhere, Manning sat down with ABC, CBS, WBUR and NPR Fresh Air’s podcast to discuss her memoir and her polarizing public image. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the memoir on October 18, 2022.
README.txt, the highly-anticipated memoir from Chelsea Manning, published this week to a wave of media attention. Jordy Rosenberg for The Washington Post praises the “electrifying opening” of the memoir, adding: “README.txt serves as an insider confessional turned inside out for the 21st century. The perverse secret of our era, one that Manning details in multiple surreal encounters with military bureaucracy, is that everything is already known. Manning is canny in her refusal to simply embrace the confessional mode often demanded of trans writers and whistleblowers alike...Manning’s memoir may thus give us less, not more, of what we may think we know about her. But this is an artful refusal, and an important one…The narrative progression that unfolds over these pages forms a sublime arc.” Meanwhile, Margaret Sullivan for The New York Times Book Review writes: “Manning weaves together her role as a whistle-blower — utterly disillusioned by what she saw and experienced in the military — with her sad personal story…Manning’s memoir fills in some blanks and, most important, adds a searing personal element. The writing in README.txt is vivid, as its narrative moves from an Oklahoma childhood to community college in Maryland to an unpredictable decision to enlist — brought about partly by dire financial need — which eventually brought her to the Middle East.” Elsewhere, Manning sat down with ABC, CBS, WBUR and NPR Fresh Air’s podcast to discuss her memoir and her polarizing public image. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the memoir on October 18, 2022.
