Jamie Hood weaves an autopsy with poetry. Hood is not dead, nor are her experiences something that can be separated from her life, but the recollections of her rapes and their lasting effects on her brim with anti-life. She dissects the brutality and banality of rape with the language of a poet and the investigative skills of a reporter. The use of her own diaries as a first-person account of what happened gives a wrenching weight to how the events of her life have effected her ability to recall, to be a reliable witness to her own experience, paralleling the scrutiny we give rape survivors. Hood plays with narratives, first, second and third, singular and plural, in a move that would be gimmicky in the hands of a less talented writer. Hood grapples with the events laid out in the book, not to own them, as she outright admits, but to have something tangible so she can let go. This is not a story of overcoming trauma. It is a book that needed to be written, a necessary step in Hood’s journey to heal.

This was so beautifully and personally written. I’m struggling with what to say about it, not because I don’t have much to say, but because I have so much. Jamie Hood writes so honestly about the traumas she’s experienced in her own life and, by virtue, the traumas that so many women face : rape, assault, the casual misogyny that comes along with existing in a society that elects a man like Trump to the presidency. This is a mix of personal writing and literary criticism, with a focus on rape survivors from ancient poetry up to Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. Hood’s writing feels angry and timely, and also individualistic - grammar and sentence structure choices add to the feeling that this is a personal narrative. I did not enjoy my time with this. It was upsetting and triggering and anger-inducing, but we as a collective should be reading work like this to further connect us to one another and to our individual struggles.