I've had to think up a way to survive on trauma, persistence, and Dolly Parton
"When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she spent the money from her NYPL fellowship on a trip to Dollywood with her family. Melnick's trauma began long before 2018, but events of that year forced her to relive portions of it--abortions, drug abuse, rape--even as she was confronting new pain i...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Austin :
University of Texas Press,
2022.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | American music series.
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| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | "When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she spent the money from her NYPL fellowship on a trip to Dollywood with her family. Melnick's trauma began long before 2018, but events of that year forced her to relive portions of it--abortions, drug abuse, rape--even as she was confronting new pain in the loss of close friends and family. Dolly Parton's music had been a balm and a source of inspiration for decades, and so the trip to Dollywood was "a personal reckoning with my traumatic, often violent past... the culmination of a difficult year that left me wanting to get to the bottom of just what it is I love and need to say about Dolly." Each chapter of this book explores some aspect of Melnick's life through the lens of one of Parton's songs. Melnick is a mother, wife, daughter, survivor, poet; this manuscript has her examining sex, sex work, religion, jealousy, class, nostalgia, aging, illness, motherhood, addiction, abortion, and art, among other topics that can be illuminated in a discussion and appreciation of Dolly's music and life"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 266 pages ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9781477322673 1477322671 |
| Author Notes: | Lynn Melnick is the author of three books of poetry and a contributor to Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture . Her poems have appeared in the New Republic , the New Yorker , and the Paris Review ; her essays have appeared in Jewish Currents , LA Review of Books , and Poetry Daily . Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn. |
