Can I Read Your Diary?

My love for diaries and journals

Nov 26, 2023

I am a curious person. I want to know as much as I can and take an interest in many subjects but my favorite subject is, of course, people.

I like to people-watch. I like to listen in on conversations when I’m out in the world. Some may call me nosy and I don’t disagree. People are fascinating and I love talking to them. But nothing excites me more than reading a diary.

The first diary I fell in love with was a fictional diary of a girl named Amelia. Amelia was a spunky 10yr old, with a great best friend and a sister she constantly fought with. I was in the 4th or 5th grade when I found a copy at the bookstore. The cover caught my eye immediately and I was instantly inspired. I had been keeping a diary since I was 7 but Amelia’s Notebook was on a whole other level. It became a series and I collected them all. I can’t tell you how many times I read those books.

Early this year I got my hands on a copy of Amelia’s Notebook and below is a picture of that book and my own notebook from 1996.

What a time.

The next diary that completely changed me was The Diary of Anne Frank. I was in the 7th grade when I read it for the first time. I remember an 8th grader telling me about it at lunch one day. Every year the whole 8th grade class was assigned The Diary of Anne Frank but after hearing her tell me about the book, I knew I couldn’t wait a whole year to read it. So I found a copy at the used bookstore and was completely obsessed. It was the first time I read a diary that wasn’t fictional. Anne’s diary took me on a journey and taught me lessons about empathy, courage, and writing down the truth, even when it hurts.

Just the thought that a young girl’s diary could be so powerful was the coolest thing to me and the fact that I could pick up a real diary from a real person at the bookstore blew my young mind.

I couldn’t write this without mentioning Sylvia Plath. I think the first time I picked up The Journals of Sylvia Plath I was in college. I was already a devoted fan of her poetry so of course I had to pick up her journals. I have yet to finish the whole thing in its entirety. My original copy got lost in a move which is a bummer because that copy had many notes in the margins but I think in the new year I would like to start from the beginning. Revisit what I’ve forgotten and discover the passages that have been waiting all these years for me. The most fascinating thing to me about Sylvia is that after reading almost everything by her, she’s still such a mystery to me and I think even if I finally finish reading her journals, she will still be an enigma that watches over us sad lit girls.

So who else watched the 2002 movie Frida starring Salma Hayek?? I was a senior in High School and that film was the first time I was really exposed to Frida Kahlo and her artwork. But it wasn’t until a car accident a few years later that I began to really connect with the artist. Frida was the first person to help me understand my chronic pain and showed me that there were many ways to channel the pain. Much of her artwork is an exploration of that and her diary is no different. The Diary of Frida Kahlo is filled with thoughts, drawings, declarations, and poems, her diary helps give her artwork a multitude of meanings. It was the first diary I read that also felt like a piece of art that you hang on the wall. It wasn’t just one thing and neither was Frida.

The last two diaries or ones I discovered this past year. First is Too Much Life by Clarice Lispector. Now I am being a little looser here when it comes to the definition of a diary/journal. Too Much Life is a collection of short essays, newspaper pieces, memories, and serialized stories. But many of it reads like journal pieces and she exposes so much of herself in these Crônicas. I have not finished this collection but I’m finding it really interesting. If you have never read Lispector’s work before, I recommend picking up one of her novels first before diving into her non-fiction. Much like Sylvia Plath, she’s a new mystery I’m hoping to never solve.

The last diary is one I’m going to read this week and it’s called My Picture Diary by Fujiwara Maki. It chronicles Maki’s daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu.