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Book Cover for: You Have a New Memory, Aiden Arata

You Have a New Memory

Aiden Arata

Reader Score

80%

80% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Good

Based on 6 reviews on

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An open-hearted interrogation of our digital selves, braiding cultural criticism, memoir, and narrative musings into an exploration of identity, girlhood, media, tech, nature and "finding the depth and beauty in the fucked-up world we live in" from a writer, artist, and influencer (Phoebe Bridgers).

YOU HAVE A NEW MEMORY is a deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. In her highly anticipated debut, Aiden Arata brings us raw reportage from the liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next.

With high-res, cosmic vision and razor-sharp wit, this kaleidoscopic collection of essays artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet. Arata exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse.

Arata is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
  • Publish Date: Jul 22nd, 2025
  • Pages: 240
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.79in - 5.85in - 0.90in - 0.77lb
  • EAN: 9781538767597
  • Categories: Internet - Social MediaMemoirsEssays

About the Author

Aiden Arata is a writer and artist whose writing has appeared in publications including BOMB, NYLON, The Rumpus, The Fanzine, Hobart, and others, as well as NDA: An Autofiction Anthology (Archways Editions 2022). Arata's visual and video work has been featured on platforms including Vice, The Cut, Harper's Bazaar, Mashable, and The Washington Post. You Have a New Memory is her first essay collection. She lives in Los Angeles and on the internet as @aidenarata.

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"Aiden Arata's You Have a New Memory is a kaleidoscopic portrait of growing up gripped in the fist of the internet age. These essays are tender, curious, and shamelessly smart. Arata understands the painful ache of wanting to be seen-and the price we pay for getting the very thing that we want."--Isle McElroy, author of People Collide
"In "You Have a New Memory" Aiden Arata reports directly from the source, as a living, breathing participant in the creator/consumer samsara, where the stakes have never been higher. Delivered in her signature undulating prose, she knits microscopic observations with the shock of humor, violence and unexpected pathos, resulting in a vivid, hyperreal effect; the kind often reported in psychedelic use where the world is rearranged and seen anew."--Nada Alic, author of New York Times Editors' Choice Pick Bad Thoughts