Robin Williams Is My Uncle, And Other Stories We Possess
Robin Williams Is My Uncle: And Other Stories We Possess is a bricolage study on inherited trauma and the stories we keep inside our bodies.
Robin Williams is not her uncle, no more than he is yours. But like Robin’s humor, this text bounces from one reference to the next. Bound by its own rhythms and joy, the story unravels as it aims to protect itself.
An autotheory about alienation, the uncanny, and epigenetics told through the lens of Robin Williams’s children’s movies, fairy tales, feminism, and the death of her beloved cat, Rufus.
A Shape & Color Books publication.
Published August 24th, 2025.
Cover art by her daughter, Aria Block.
Reading the opening pages at Water Street Writers:
Actual Reviews
“The cutting edge of hybrid literature, Robin Williams Is My Uncle deserves to be on everyone’s bookshelf.”
Rick Holinger
“With brilliance and bite, Borders bends genre into revelation.
This is a book about epigenetics and trauma, yes, but it’s also about the impossible intimacy we project onto celebrities. It’s about the way Robin Williams’s characters—become scaffolding for our own unresolved ache.
Borders doesn’t just write—she performs on the page. She is a creative genius, bending genre- unspooling metaphors that make you want to underline whole passages and whisper, yes, exactly this. She invites us to ask ourselves about the uncanny way our bodies hold the stories we never agreed to keep.
She threads this complexity with a playful ferocity: she is Rufus, letting prey go only to circle back and catch it again, every prey a Williams character reimagined, every capture another chance to ask, what wound is mine, what wound is borrowed?
The brilliance lies in the way she marries pop-cultural scenes with philosophical excavation- which never feel pedantic; instead, they are like secrets whispered at the kitchen table after the kids are finally asleep.
Borders reminds us that Robin Williams’ joy was never just his own. Reading this book is less like consuming a story and more like being drawn into a séance—called to witness, called to carry weight, called to laugh, ache, and marvel at the unbearable lightness that holds us all.”
Cyndi Martz
“I Shouldn’t Have Liked It, But I Did!
I rarely read the books I format. Of course, I have to read a little bit of each book to figure out what goes where. That’s my job. With this book I would read a line to figure out where to put it and a few minutes later realized I had read a couple pages. I knew I had to read the whole thing.
The back cover and Amazon description says the book is a ‘bricolage study.’ Words like ‘autotheory’ and ‘epigenetics’ are there too. Academic gobbledygook. I could have looked them up, but I didn’t care to know. I did know that the book is a good read. I’m a pedestrian book consumer: mysteries, legal dramas, non-fiction history… I should not have found this book compelling. But, I did. I started it and didn’t stop until I was done. It kept my attention, which if you read enough you know isn’t always the case. The weird thing: I can’t nail down why it kept my attention. It’s certainly not a traditional story structure that I’m used to reading.”
Kevin Moriarity
“Cathy Borders is a creative genius. This is the first “experimental ” memoir I have ever read. It took me about fifteen pages to get the rhythm of her writing. I was sad when the book ended. My husband—who limits his reading to the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal and medical journals—is reading the book. He is only about 20 pages in. I asked him what he thought so far. His reply: Creative genius. I look forward to her next book.”
Eileen Cornacchia
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