If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays: American Lives
Autor Jill Christmanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 31 aug 2022
Vezi toate premiile Carte premiată
Foreword INDIES Silver Winner in Autobiography and Memoir
Winner of a 2023 Book of the Year Award from Chicago Writers Association
If This Were Fiction is a love story—for Jill Christman’s long-ago fiancé, who died young in a car accident; for her children; for her husband, Mark; and ultimately, for herself. In this collection, Christman takes on the wide range of situations and landscapes she encountered on her journey from wild child through wounded teen to mother, teacher, writer, and wife. In these pages there are fatal accidents and miraculous births; a grief pilgrimage that takes Christman to jungles, volcanoes, and caves in Central America; and meditations on everything from sexual trauma and the more benign accidents of childhood to gun violence, indoor cycling, unlikely romance, and even a ghost or two.
Playing like a lively mixtape in both subject and style, If This Were Fiction focuses an open-hearted, frequently funny, clear-eyed feminist lens on Christman’s first fifty years and sends out a message of love, power, and hope.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496232359
ISBN-10: 1496232356
Pagini: 228
Ilustrații: 2 illustrations
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 16 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria American Lives
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496232356
Pagini: 228
Ilustrații: 2 illustrations
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 16 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria American Lives
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Jill Christman is the author of two memoirs, Darkroom: A Family Exposure and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Ball State University, a senior editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and executive producer for the podcast Indelible: Campus Sexual Violence.
Extras
The Sloth
There is a nothingness of temperature, a point on the body’s mercury
where our blood feels neither hot nor cold. I remember a
morning swim on the black sand eastern coast of Costa Rica four
months after my twenty-two-year-old fiancé was killed in a car
accident. Walking into the sea, disembodied by grief, I felt no
barriers between my skin, the air, and the water.
Later, standing under a trickle of water in the wooden outdoor
shower, I heard a rustle, almost soundless, and looking up, expecting
something small, I saw my first three-toed sloth. Mottled and
filthy, he hung by his meat-hook claws not five feet above my head
in the cecropia tree. He peered down at me, his flattened head
turned backward on his neck.
Here is a fact: a sloth cannot regulate the temperature of his
blood. He must live near the equator.
I thought I knew slow, but this guy, this guy was slow. The
sound I heard was his wiry-haired blond elbow, brushed green
with living algae, stirring a leaf as he reached for the next branch.
Pressing my wet palms onto the rough wooden walls, I watched
the sloth move in the shadows of the canopy. Still reaching. And
then still reaching.
What else is this slow? Those famous creatures of slow—the
snail, the tortoise—they move faster. Much. This slow seemed
impossible, not real, like a trick of my sad head. Dripping and
naked in the jungle, I thought, That sloth is as slow as grief. We
were numb to the speed of the world. We were one temperature.
There is a nothingness of temperature, a point on the body’s mercury
where our blood feels neither hot nor cold. I remember a
morning swim on the black sand eastern coast of Costa Rica four
months after my twenty-two-year-old fiancé was killed in a car
accident. Walking into the sea, disembodied by grief, I felt no
barriers between my skin, the air, and the water.
Later, standing under a trickle of water in the wooden outdoor
shower, I heard a rustle, almost soundless, and looking up, expecting
something small, I saw my first three-toed sloth. Mottled and
filthy, he hung by his meat-hook claws not five feet above my head
in the cecropia tree. He peered down at me, his flattened head
turned backward on his neck.
Here is a fact: a sloth cannot regulate the temperature of his
blood. He must live near the equator.
I thought I knew slow, but this guy, this guy was slow. The
sound I heard was his wiry-haired blond elbow, brushed green
with living algae, stirring a leaf as he reached for the next branch.
Pressing my wet palms onto the rough wooden walls, I watched
the sloth move in the shadows of the canopy. Still reaching. And
then still reaching.
What else is this slow? Those famous creatures of slow—the
snail, the tortoise—they move faster. Much. This slow seemed
impossible, not real, like a trick of my sad head. Dripping and
naked in the jungle, I thought, That sloth is as slow as grief. We
were numb to the speed of the world. We were one temperature.
Cuprins
Part I. since feeling is first
The Sloth
Going Back to Plum Island
The Surprise Baby
The River Cave
Bird Girls
Life’s Not a Paragraph
Part II. we are for each other
Family Portrait
The Eleven-Minute Crib Nap
The Googly Eye
A Stone Pear
Leading the Children Out of Town
Slaughterhouse Island
Part III. And death i think is no parenthesis
The Avocado
The Baby and the Alligator
Aiskhyne
The Lucky Ones
Naked Underneath Our Clothes
Spinning
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
The Sloth
Going Back to Plum Island
The Surprise Baby
The River Cave
Bird Girls
Life’s Not a Paragraph
Part II. we are for each other
Family Portrait
The Eleven-Minute Crib Nap
The Googly Eye
A Stone Pear
Leading the Children Out of Town
Slaughterhouse Island
Part III. And death i think is no parenthesis
The Avocado
The Baby and the Alligator
Aiskhyne
The Lucky Ones
Naked Underneath Our Clothes
Spinning
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
Recenzii
“Christman’s writing is moving and poetic, and she has a knack for imbuing profundity into everyday activities, whether slicing an avocado or climbing a hill. Fans of the personal essay shouldn’t miss these intimate encounters.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Eloquent and probing, Christman’s essays examine the profound ways relationships can—for better or worse—transform an individual life and provide glimpses into the complexities of the human heart. A warmly wise, intimate memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews
"If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays gives you what you didn't know you needed: sloths and loss and Swedish Fish candy, alligators and avocados and bird girls, pain and loss and hard traveling back to confront that pain, googly eyes and wayward skirts and lipsticks uncapped in purses, electric eye contact with a fetching poet across a dive bar, all woven with joy."—Sonya Huber, Brevity
“Reading these essays is like hanging out with a true friend, someone who isn’t afraid to be real. Jill Christman writes about love, loss, trauma, fear, parenthood, and the strange wonder of our past and former selves with deep understanding, humor, and so much beauty.”—Beth (Bich Minh) Nguyen, author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner
“If This Were Fiction is the collection I wish I had the talent and skill to write. Christman’s words shine with unusual beauty and hard-earned brilliance.”—Ashley C. Ford, author of Somebody’s Daughter
“What is more complex than love, marriage, motherhood, and family? Probably nothing, but Jill Christman takes the deep dive with intelligent, intense, intimate essays that will catch you off guard and leave you wanting more. If This Were Fiction is a piercing book by a brilliant, gutsy writer.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of To Hell with It
“Engaging and distinctive. Christman brings intelligence, wit, and insightful honesty to her personal experiences with motherhood, womanhood, and girlhood, to abuse and its legacies, to the search for joy, creative expression, and love. Moving, beautifully written, and often quite funny.”—Megan Harlan, author of Mobile Home: A Memoir in Essays
Descriere
Playing like a lively mixtape in both subject and style, If This Were Fiction takes on gender-based violence, trauma, recovery, and motherhood, focusing an open-hearted, frequently funny, clear-eyed feminist lens on Jill Christman’s first fifty years.
Premii
- Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Silver Medal Winner, 2022