Never forget /
to connect the dots /
This book is an attempt to connect a couple.
In Begin by Telling, experimental pop sensation and Polaris nominee Meg Remy spins a web out from her body to myriad corners of American hyper-culture. Through illustrated lyric essays depicting memories from early childhood to present day, Remy paints a stark portrait of a spectacle-driven country.
These memories are visceral. As though channel surfing, we catch glimpses of Desert Storm, the Oklahoma City Bombing, random street violence, the petrochemical industry, small town Deadheads, a toilet with uterus lining in it, the county STD clinic, and missionaries at the front door. Each is shared through language of the body; the sensation of experiencing many of the defining events and moments of a country.
These threads nimbly interweave with probing quotes and statistics, demonstrating the importance of personal storytelling, radical empathy, and the necessity of reflecting on society and one's self within that construct.
Immersive and utterly compelling, Begin by Telling is an artifact of our time; a fascinating perspective on American culture.
Praise for Begin By Telling:
Begin By Telling explores the horrors and absurdity of being a girl in the mediated warscape of America. With sharp emotional intelligence, Remy reveals a cultural systemic rot that begins with family and fractals out into school, life, the media, the government, and history. Both hallucinogenic and lucid, this work is a radical interrogation of trauma, and a literary salve for the feminist psyche. --Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave and Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions and Criticisms
