The World Imagined - Softcover

Slater, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997874155 ISBN 13: 9780997874150

Publisher: Buffalo Arts Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

The World Imagined is a coming of age tale for all adults who never forgot the fragile brilliance and lurking terrors of being a child. As a girl keenly aware of her difference, yet lacking access to the history that would place her, Judith Slater moves through illnesses and frailties, finding herself a brave Diana, guardian of the forests, and later, a woman with the strength to seek the very past that eluded her. Throughout this tender, utterly authentic book, we see astute portraits of childhood hyper-vigilance, as well as a soul's fierce joy. Slater writes with the subtle care of a poet, in language that is acutely sensitive and lyrically moving. She not only "discovers a self in the world" (and a profound self it is) but imagines one into being. --Lia Purpura

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Slater spent her childhood in rural Western New York, eventually pursuing literary interests as well as becoming a therapist and settling in the Buffalo area with her husband and family. Her book of poems, The Wind Turning Pages, was published by the Outriders Poetry Project in 2011.

Ruth Armstrong, grew up in the wilds of central New York State. She has a graduate degree in Visual Arts from the University at Buffalo.

Review:

A shimmering rendering of an adopted child's odyssey on her long journey towards Home. Adopted at birth, Judith Slater grew up not only in a small town and its surrounding fields and woods, but also in the stories she spun to give her world emotional substance. She was born a fawn in a woodland clearing. She ministered to a tribe of miniature people who needed her help. She also learned from a farmer's gaggle of raucous children to run and wrestle and climb, tomboying herself from sickness to health. She grew into the dangerous teens. These strands and the thirst for a fuller sense of herself gave life to the real mission: the search for her birth mother. Judith Slater has retrieved for us an enthralling tale of search and adventure, of loss and finding. --Ann Goldsmith

Reading Judith Slater's tough-minded and moving memoir, I imagine a speaker haunted by two commandments: Understand what you cannot accept and Accept what you cannot understand. She seems to know quite clearly how these are not at all the same command, and the way that her narrative works through them gives me immense pleasure and hope. -- Max Wickert

About this edition

• Publisher: Buffalo Arts Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0997874155
• ISBN 13: 9780997874150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Armstrong Ruth