This also comes in light of some news that I have some sort of disc issues/boney growth in my back that may require surgery, but definitely will require taking it easy (thus, no hiking for awhile). Just until they figure out what is up and a long-term plan. So frustrating as I was just starting to feel better. In attempt to keep writing I am challenging myself to keep reading.
The first book I read was The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom
Saterstrom was my creative writing professor this past quarter and I find it to be important to know people's work, especially when working with them. So I bought this book in an attempt to be more familiar with creative work and the folks producing it.
I find this to be a fabulous book, not solely because I know her. Saterstrom's use of language paints a horrifying multi-generational tale of relationships between white women in the South and their relationships with men. In many ways it is a tale of epistemology and ways of the body knowing. How do white women and girls learn to deal with abuse, alcoholism, sexuality, and pass this knowledge on to their daughters? How do the women's bodies within the narrative learn to negotiate complicated and problematic relationships and historical legacies?
Saterstrom's syntax is revelatory of the ghosts that live in and between language. The gaps between words in the first section demonstrates the haunting of language, what is not said/written leaves a rich subtext that is as prolific as the words that grace the page. My greatest love, as with most great books, is no immediate or satisfactory resolution, except to read it again.
It is short yet complex, written in the style of vignettes for multiple sections, that start to unravel the density of the narrative, which is never completely undone or made transparent. This forces the reader to actively engage in the text not idle through it as mindless entertainment.
I am immediately drawn into the section when the narrator "I" becomes present, not because I am concerned with it being the author but because it allows me a place to enter the text. What parts of this "I" story are my own similar, yet different narrative. As a woman who has been alive as a part of a 4-5 female generation family myself what are family and personal stories we circulate, which ones do we keep hidden? Whether the text is semi-autobiographical or not isn't the point (although context is always important), the meaning drawn out is important.
The narrative is one of those stories that needs to be told, heard.
