Island Native Pens Hilarious, Irreverent 'Yoga' Memoir

A standing-room-only crowd at Friday night laughed out loud as Suzanne Morrison read from her hilarious new memoir Yoga Bitch:

“I had left my home, my people, for what? To join a cult? But I had to be careful, I’ve seen enough zombie movies to know that your doom lies in your discovery. So…I tried to smile, like great, so great to be here with other people who drink pee, and I kept on nodding. I doubt I was convincing anybody, but what else could I do? I’m outnumbered, there’s no escape. I’m stranded on an island, among piss drinkers.”

“So you can see it’s a classy book!” said Morrison, who had to nearly shout to be heard over the laughter and applause of family, friends, teachers and classmates from . “You make us all very proud,” shouted an audience member and Island resident.

Before she discovered yoga, Suzanne Morrison’s idea of exercise was rearranging bookshelves or walking to to buy a pack of cigarettes. But once she turned 25, the month after 9/11, Morrison began having panic attacks about dying and decided it was time to get a healthy perspective on spirituality and her body by going on a yoga retreat in Bali. Morrison’s experiences as a culture-shocked Mercer Island native and alum, surrounded by vegetarian yoga fanatics led her to write a comedic one-woman stage play when she returned to Seattle in 2002.

“I debuted in New York and then toured with the show in London, and then to Memphis, Maui and Seattle,” she said. “When I did the show at Bumbershoot, we had to turn people away.”

But because she’s always considered herself a writer, due to the influence of fourth-grade teacher Frank Perry, Morrison felt she needed to express her experiences in novel form.

“Publishers kept getting back to me saying that if the story were written as a memoir they’d buy it,” she said. “Since the story was better served as a memoir anyway, I changed a few names but otherwise just wrote honestly about what happened to me and my life-changing experiences.”

Morrison started writing the memoir version of her story in 2007 and didn’t finish it until last year, while the book debuted in August 2011.

“My book has a lot to do with the question of faith,” said Morrison, “I grew up with half my friends being Jewish and another quarter being protestant, while my family attended , so Mercer Island helped me to appreciate diversity in faith.”

Morrison also noted that her tenure at Youth Theater Northwest under the tutelage of Peter Donaldson was a “gift you don’t ever lose.”

“It’s surprisingly interesting to read about your family and your child’s perspective on growing up here,” said Kathy Morrison, the author’s mother and former principal. “I don’t think any mother expects to see that in print.”

“But we’re really proud of her and excited for her,” adds brother Frank. “We love to see all her hard work come to fruition.”

When Morrison, a 1995 MIHS graduate, isn’t practicing yoga, she’s writing another one-woman show about serial killers and another memoir about coming of age on Mercer Island called, Your Own Personal Alcatraz.

“This was such a great, inspiring place to grow up, all my best friends are from Mercer Island, and I still hang out with most of them, including my neighbors and my family, so it’s a big group that keeps growing as friends from college move back to the Island,” she said. “But now that I’m on the last leg of my book tour for Yoga Bitch, I just had to do a special reading here at Island Books. I have memories of being 5 years old and having Roger (Page) recommend books for me to read, all the way up through the literature I was reading in high school."

"This evening has been such a wonderful time, it’s great to be home.”