Summary

The first chapter of Part V: Feel Free is titled “Life-Writing.” In it, Smith revisits some of the childhood diaries she tried to keep in high school. However, she never had much success with the endeavor because she found diary-writing—“this voice you put on for supposedly no one but yourself” (351)—depressing. After reading a number of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, Smith tried as a young adult to revisit diary-writing. Again, she failed. She now realizes that she does not want to record her days. She considers her true diary her Yahoo email account.

In “The Bathroom,” Smith describes the time when her family moved out of their council estate and into their own home. Her parents considered the extra toilet and spare room signs that they had now climbed out of poverty and reached...