book 7: Notes from No Man's Land by Eula Biss

Published by Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2009

"To flee within your own nation is to create a kind of captivity for yourself. A self-imposed exile. And so, the despair of the suburbs" (from "Babylon").

This evocative book speaks on race and identity with creativity of thought, powerful metaphor, and associative language. At times these essays terrified me, made me feel culpable and ashamed of my own belief in artifice and myth as she simultaneously pointed out her own growth within her understanding of identity and race in the U.S. She writes about alienation and community, often simultaneously. And she is able to take and compare the surprising and unexpected in order to make insightful, startling comments on our past and on our present society and culture. This book is worth buying and sharing and reading over again.