When Stephanie Kuehnert moved to Oak Park as a third-grader, she dreamed of having stories to tell. Whether it was a story she was the main character in or a fictional tale she could invent, she spent her young years in School District 200 imagining what was to come.
Recently Kuehnert returned to her native Chicagoland with plenty of stories to tell about her time in Oak Park, recounted in her new memoir “Pieces of a Girl” released this spring. In July, the author made two appearances at area book stores: The Pile Bookstore in Berwyn and at The Book Cellar in Chicago, where she shared her stories of the Western suburbs she grew up in and how they shaped her into the person she is now.
“This memoir covers from childhood, from the time that I moved to Oak Park when I was eight years old, in third grade, through my time in college at Columbia College Chicago,” Kuehnert said. “There was a bit of time spent away from Oak Park and the Chicago area, but not much. It really is largely centered in my experience growing up in Oak Park.”
Fashioned in the style of the zines she made as a teenager and young writer, “Pieces of a Girl” tells Kuehnert’s stories as a young girl in the ‘90s who faced abuse and addiction. Feeling like she was always an outsider, she shares that finding expression and community pulled her out of what felt like an inevitable spiral and made her into a powerful and resilient young woman.
“It’s about the things that I grappled with in my teen years: depression, emotional and sexual abuse in a relationship, substance abuse,” Kuehnert said. “And really at the center, it’s about how I survived through creativity, storytelling and finding community.”
Told as a narrative story, Kuehnert fashioned pages taken from her old journals with new writings, poems and photos to capture her feelings and experiences. Accompanied with illustrations from Suzy Exposito, the memoir tells the linear story of Kuehnert surviving abuse and finding herself.
“I think it’s just a different experience and I think it also really sets you in the time of the ‘90s,” Kuehnert said of the zine-style. “It’s really meant to feel like these bits of my past have sort of been Xeroxed and have been collected.”
Kuehnert, who also authored “Battles of Suburbia” and “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” said that it took 10 years from the book’s proposal to its publication. Kuehnert, who left Oak Park over a decade ago, spent her time crafting the book from her home in Seattle.
“It’s been funny because I’ve been working on the memoir while I’ve not been really back in Oak Park or the Chicago area at all,” Kuehnert said. “I’ve been writing it all from home in Seattle now, so going back into it was interesting and it was a process.”
Writing about her past and challenging memories was cathartic for Kuehnert, who said talking about challenges is the key to processing things and healing without shame. Although she was not in Oak Park when writing, diving back into her time as a young adult in the area helped her to understand herself better.
“Through writing it, I realized healing really was an iterative process, and still is an iterative process,” Kuehnert said. “This is just so true, especially when abuse and addiction are involved.”
Kuehnert hopes that young readers who pick up this book will be inspired to tell their own stories. The need to have her voice heard as a teenager led her towards a career in writing, and she said that she hopes readers feel inspired to use theirs.
“Every person has a story and so many folks are silenced; either because of their identities or because they’re young, because they’re trauma survivors,” Kuehnert said. “Your voice matters, and however you want to get it out there creatively, there are so many paths now. I just encourage folks to do that.”