We Can Be Both Torn And Whole

On superpowers + writing constraints + fragments + the tyranny of confirmation bias and "this one weird trick" for getting around it + changing the past and ourselves simply by writing about it

Area Broken by Perpendiculars (ca.1934) painting in high resolution by Joseph Schillinger

GUEST POST BY MEGAN VERED (originally appeared in The Rumpus, March 2021

Jeannine Ouellette’s debut memoir, The Part That Burns (Split/Lip Press, January 2021) recounts a painful personal history in fragmented vignettes. In gorgeous prose, Ouellette writes about coming out of hiding and being found, about living in a fragmented body and becoming whole. She recounts the story of an unstable childhood choreographed by an impetuous and reproachful mother, who repeatedly kicks her out of the family and banishes her to the basement. She survives the repeated advances of a groping stepfather and the conditional love of a fractured father. Meanwhile, she dreams of the doors that will open to her future life when she will have her own family. Which she does, and, as her narrative unfolds, she masterfully excavates the truths of her upbringing and the childhood scars that threaten to open and bleed. Yet wha…