A Family is a House - Softcover

Pearson, Dustin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1949540014 ISBN 13: 9781949540017

Publisher: C&R Press, 2019

Synopsis

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Pearson's debut introduced us to a master transmogrifier. In this surreal, follow-up collection he investigates the architectural implications of inheritance--how the human body houses the violence of its forebears. A FAMILY IS A HOUSE is a blueprint, a guide to the logical structures and spaces we build in our minds: sometimes to keep our secrets in, sometimes to keep the horrors out. Pearson offers us an answer to the toughest question: what happens when our secrets are our horrors? We build, compartmentalize, and quarantine. We refract, reflect, demolish, and burn. This is a book about the oldest partition--that thin wall between the dark and the light. This is a book about bravery, about severing oneself from a lineage of abuse. When the hands that feed us also beat us, we must beat them back with the gifts we've been given. Through Pearson, we relearn that language can be weaponized into a kind of magic that saves us.

About this title

About the Author:

Dustin Pearson is the author of MILLENNIAL ROOST (C&R Press, 2018) and A FAMILY IS A HOUSE (C&R Press, 2019). He is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at Florida State University. The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Pearson has served as the editor of Hayden's Ferry Review and a Director of the Clemson Literary Festival. He won the Academy of American Poets Katharine C. Turner Prize and holds an MFA from Arizona State University. His work appears in Blackbird, Vinyl Poetry, Bennington Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere.

Review:

Pearson's debut introduced us to a master transmogrifier. In this surreal, follow-up collection he investigates the architectural implications of inheritance--how the human body houses the violence of its forebears. A Family Is a House is a blueprint, a guide to the logical structures and spaces we build in our minds: sometimes to keep our secrets in, sometimes to keep the horrors out. Pearson offers us an answer to the toughest question: what happens when our secrets are our horrors? We build, compartmentalize, and quarantine. We refract, reflect, demolish, and burn. This is a book about the oldest partition--that thin wall between the dark and the light. This is a book about bravery, about severing oneself from a lineage of abuse. When the hands that feed us also beat us, we must beat them back with the gifts we've been given. Through Pearson, we relearn that language can be weaponized into a kind of magic that saves us.
- Brandon Rushton

In Dustin Pearson's A Family Is a House we are gifted with a new surreal pantheon dissecting the mythology that arises from family. A brother's tail that grows uncontrolled across a neighborhood. A mother who becomes a furnace, burning everything in her path. A father who leaves drippings of flesh for his children. In this stunning collection the violence and terror are palpable - we've known it in our homes, we know it in our nation. This book is an incredible, visceral experience from one of the most striking and necessary voices in poetry today.
-Glenn Shaheen

About this edition

• Publisher: C&R Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1949540014
• ISBN 13: 9781949540017
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72