Machado’s fragmentation of her own story into many storytelling archetypes seems ambitious and unexpected for a book centered around such a serious topic. The point isn’t to document the history of the abusers and the abused, as Machado points out, “The abused woman has been certainly been around as long as human beings have been capable of psychological manipulation and interpersonal violence.” Machado keeps returning to this central idea within the memoir: Stories of abused women have been silenced, and even more so, the stories of abused queer women have barely had a chance to be told. These vignettes, read on their own, range from masterfully crafted, poetic lines of introspection to descriptions of Machado’s past relationship with abuse.īy chronicling her own experience with abuse, Machado informs the history, or lack thereof, in literature about abuse in queer relationships. Carmen Maria Machado depicts the complexity and surreptitious truth of the abuse of queer women through the mosaic portraiture of her own past self in her memoir “In the Dream House.” Machado, the author of the short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties” and a finalist for the National Book Award, employs original methods of storytelling and teaching in her latest work, recounting her past through a string of vignettes all written within the confines of various narrative tropes, such as haunted house or choose your own adventure.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |