A Smoke and a Song

June 5, 2023
Yoga instructor Sidoti recounts her experiences of childhood abuse in this stirring debut memoir. As the granddaughter of poet Stanley Kunitz, Sidoti’s 1970s New York City childhood was shot through with art and culture. Behind the scenes, though, she was among the third generation of women in her family to endure sexual and emotional abuse—in her case, from her mother’s boyfriend. With her volatile father away in a cabin upstate, Sidoti found solace in her grandmother’s private art studio, where she developed an inner voice, learning that “in public, we can be one person. In private, someone else.” In adulthood, the traumas of her past resurfaced relentlessly, interfering with her marriage and yoga career: “Spiky bits... bubble up. The unprotected, neglected little girl who resides inside. The young woman who tried to forget by smoking her grandmother’s cigarettes. The forty-nine-year-old woman who forces a run instead of taking a nap when she’s tired.” She ultimately makes peace with these past selves by discussing her traumas with her family and using various spiritual practices, including yoga, to remind herself that “new life is blooming. Loss is looming. And both gladness and grief grip at the gate.” This is powerful stuff. Agent: Jennifer Utner, Utner Agency.

Sidoti, founder of the FLY Yoga School, reflects upon her path of healing and self-discovery after surviving childhood chaos and trauma. The author, born in 1970, is the youngest of three sisters. Their father, Warren Drapkin, departed their Brooklyn townhouse and moved into an upstate Catskills cabin when Sidoti was a year old, leaving their mother, Babette, to raise the three girls on her own. Babette (frequently working three jobs to keep the family afloat) and her daughters were a combustible mix. "The second [Babette's] home," Sidoti writes, "she's on edge--high-strung, agitated, dodgy like a chihuahua, small and nonintimidating but with a loud bark." Lisa, the oldest, was the most volatile, constantly fighting with her mother, both verbally and physically. Middle sister Maddy was the most self-centered of the trio, and the author was the peacemaker who sought refuge from the fighting curled up among her mother's collection of tall potted plants, humming quietly to herself. In the late 1970s, Babette's mother, Grandma Elise, convinced her daughter to move the quartet to a West 15th Street loft in Manhattan, just blocks away from her own studio. The eccentric, thrice-married Elise, a poet and artist, now permanently settled down with American Poet Laureate Stanley Kuntz, provided the emotional support and guidance Sidoti lacked at home. Elise also introduced her to smoking--because women "...deserve to have something just for ourselves." The author writes in the present tense, bringing readers directly into her life's impactful moments, weaving a narrative around loving but difficult relationships with the people she cares about most. In lyrical, at times searing, prose, she captures her core loneliness. Her story is a riveting intergenerational tale of women doing the best they can, sometimes failing painfully. Her search for healing leads her to yoga (which occupies a bit too much of the memoir), meditation, and a bit of mysticism. Touchingly, her meditative chants recall her soothing childhood humming. A stylish and substantial remembrance with poignantly memorable characterizations.

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