Scars - Softcover

Rawlings, Nadia Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940213002 ISBN 13: 9781940213002

Publisher: Punk Hostage Press, 2014

Synopsis

Nadia Bruce-Rawlings has written a collection of stories with a dark humor and candor that only someone with a survivor’s gratitude can. She takes us on a journey that cracks open family secrets, illustrating the evolution of dysfunction from its very core. She reminds us, as children we do not get to choose our surroundings, while relying on our parents for protection, love, and nurturing, preparing us for our own adult journey into the world, and that more times than not, this isn’t the case. Because parents get abused and scarred, by their parents who got abused and scarred, by their parents, and so on. And with each generation the trauma grows, becoming a collection and a reflection of an ongoing tradition of generational abuse. This book is written based on Nadia’s experiences on the front lines of her own personal battles with child abuse, domestic violence, molestation, addiction, crime, cutting, incarceration, and recovery. After hitting a bottom so hard with only two options left, life or death. Nadia drives home the sad and brutal truth that not everyone gets that choice. Many do not live to tell. This book is written for them, an epitaph. This book is also a love letter and a promise that there is hope for a better life, written for the ones that are still out there, still fighting their way in, and not out, who have lost their way, and still collecting scars.

About this title

About the Author:

Nadia uses grains of her often, gritty life to infuse her stories with cathartic realism. Her stories “Fire” and “Scars” have both been finalists in Glimmer Train’s writing contests and are included here in SCARS, her first anthology from Punk Hostage Press. Nadia Bruce-Rawlings grew up travelling the world and living in various countries before settling in Los Angeles. In LA she briefly worked at a vitamin factory and then began a long career in independent film distribution. A single mom for 11 years, she and her new husband have settled into the Nashville area, where she writes by the lake when she can escape their five kids and two dogs.

Review:

"SCARS is a raw and honest first book from writer Nadia Bruce-Rawlings. To open her book is to page through memories, both visceral and emotional. The prose and poetry work seamlessly together, forming a spiraling story that seems to have no end. A quick and painful read, SCARS is like ripping the bandage off a very old wound. From the violent and spectacular opening pieces the reader gets dragged into a story that is filled with landscapes and characters that always fall short of healing."   cahoodaloodaling.com

"Everybody should abandon their lives and read SCARS" - Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight, The Heroin Chronicles, and Bad Sex On Speed

"What is the psychic burden of loving a monster? What if the monster is your father, brother, son? In SCARS, Nadia Bruce-Rawlings holds the intensity of that question in a headlock of poetic prose that is crisp, patient, torn and ripe"   Antonia Crane, author of  Spent: A Memoir

Blotterature.comReviewed by Catherine VlahosAs writers and readers and listeners, we all understand the value of sharing the stories of our lives with others. However, sometimes spoken word fails us--our lips tremble, our voices stutter, our brains stumble--so we turn to writing. Nadia Bruce-Rawlings' poetry and prose collection Scars certainly speaks with a voice as raw and real as if she was confiding in you herself, and she tackles the difficult topic of child abuse with unapologetic and addicting honesty.It can sometimes be difficult for people to view trauma survivors as individuals who continue on with their lives years after their abuse, but the loosely chronological short stories and poems of Scars largely focus on what comes next. Bruce-Rawlings begins with "Fire," a surprisingly ruthless piece that captures the sinister, lifelong timeline of child abuse, from its first unsettling moments to a brutal conclusion decades later--a desperate move for closure that many survivors never quite obtain in their own lives.From there, Scars shifts from narrator to narrator--each a lost soul in their own way, fighting to survive despite drug addiction, poverty, domestic violence, and other struggles. While some themes and elements of Scars are gathered from Bruce-Rawlings' own past, the diversity of characters and their lives depicted throughout the collection highlight the fact that these issues and the range of emotions that inevitably follow them are universal. This is especially evident in "Same Death, Different Places," a forthright short story that serves as a memorial to those who lost these battles.That being said, some of the most powerful moments in Bruce-Rawlings' prose are not necessarily the most sorrowful. Anyone who knows me relatively well is familiar with the fact that I'm a huge crybaby--sad movie, happy ending, cute picture of a bunny--whatever, I'll cry about it. In this case, it is, in fact, the glimmers of light at the end of the dark tunnel of abuse that yanked at my heartstrings the most: landing on your feet after years of pain, discovering what it feels like to truly be loved, being accepted as you are without hiding your scars and your flaws, being safe, being okay. While the effects of trauma never quite leave us, Scars pays tribute to the amazing human ability to suffer, persevere, and heal, as Bruce-Rawlings writes in "Seeing Memories":"And now...I can't see my memories when I drive. But they will always be with me, just like my scars, the memories, the good and the bad, have all brought me to where I am now."

To live it is one thing... to survive it another. But to capture the legacy and impact of abuse, dysfunction, tough places and hitting bottom with such clear, evocative language is a gift. Not everyone can understand the things that drive them, the choices they never made that have an impact. That is the gift of SCARS. If you're spinning out, someone you love is truly banging on the rocks, these stories offer empathy and hope. All you have to do is crack it open, start reading and feel yourself truly exhale for the first time in days. - Holly Gleason, Author of Woman Walk The Line.

About this edition

• Publisher: Punk Hostage Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1940213002
• ISBN 13: 9781940213002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 102
• Editor: Berry Iris
• Illustrator: Cordner Geoff