The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins

Description

Lyric essayists draw on memoir, poetry, and prose to push against the arbitrary genre restrictions in creative nonfiction, opening up space not only for new forms of writing, but also new voices and a new literary canon. This anthology features some of the best lyric essays published in the last several years by prominent and emerging writers. Editors Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold situate this anthology within the ongoing work of resistance-to genre convention, literary tradition, and the confines of dominant-culture spaces. As sites of resistance, these essays are diverse and include investigations into deeply personal and political topics such as queer and trans identity, the American BIPOC experience, reproductive justice, belonging, grief, and more. The lyric essay is always surprising; it is bold, unbound, and free. This collection highlights the lyric essay's natural capacity for representation and resistance and celebrates the form as a subversive genre that offers a mode of expression for marginalized voices. The Lyric Essay as Resistance features contemporary work by essayists including Melissa Febos, Wendy S. Walters, Torrey Peters, Jenny Boully, Crystal Wilkinson, Elissa Washuta, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, and many more. Their work demonstrates the power of the lyric essay to bring about change, both on the page and in our communities. Front Cover Title Page Half Title Copyright Contents Introduction—Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold Apocalypse Logic—Elissa Washuta A Meditation on Grief: Things We Carry, Things We Remember—Crystal Wilkinson The Story You Never Tell—Chelsea Biondolillo Words First Seen in Print in 1987, According to Merriam-Webster—Krys Malcolm Belc Becoming—Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit—Aisha Sabatini Sloan Architectural Survey Form: 902 Sunset Strip—Camellia-Berry Grass Egg Face—Hea-Ream Lee Fragments, Never Sent Molly—McCully Brown World Maps—Lillian-Yvonne Bertram The Little Girl, Her Drunk Bastard Parents, and the Hummingbird—Jessica Lind Peterson As If to Say—Michael Torres Signatures—Lyzette Wanzer Toward a Poetics of Phantom Limb, Or All the Shadows That Carry Us—Jennifer S. Cheng Whens—Chloe Garcia Roberts Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay—Torrey Peters Annotating the First Page of the First Navajo-English Dictionary—Danielle Geller War Baby—Jenny Boully The Dry Season: Spring 2016—Melissa Febos Watercourses—Wendy S. Walters Acknowledgments Further Reading Contributors About the Editors