Really beautiful. Poetic. A bit repetitive. Experimental – written non-chronologically and in two voices. More about bell hooks’ “emotional landscape” than the trajectory of her life.

Small picture: Persistent omission of commas. Little-to-no dialogue.

Topics: feminism, misogyny, racism, intersectionality, childhood trauma, abuse, the craft of writing, poetry, aesthetics of life, relationships, “free love”.

Related works in my eyes: Just Kids by Patti Smith and

by Tara Westover. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, this book tells of artists building and mutually nurturing each other’s lives as artists. Like Tara Westover’s Educated, this book tells of the labor of carving out a woman’s career in academia and the related development of her intellect and personhood; of journeying towards the light of independence and self-actualization out of the shadow of childhood trauma.