Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Dog Flowers: A Memoir

With sharp, honest writing Geller pieces together a mosaic of her life in the aftermath of her mother's death from alcohol withdrawal. Using her training as an archivist, Geller takes the fragmented records found in an old suitcase kept by her mother's on-again, off-again lover to formulate an account of her mom's history and revise her own memories of her youth.

Raised by alcoholic, often abusive parents and bounced between caregivers, Geller's youth was ragged and disjointed. Abandoned early on by her enigmatic mother, Geller was raised largely by her paternal grandmother -- possibly the only sober adult in her life until college. Knowing anecdotally about her mother's Navajo heritage but with no established connections herself, Geller is confronted with this added grief of lost community when a memorial service brings her back to the reservation where her mother was raised.

The writing in this memoir reflects the contradictions and tensions Geller felt as a person trying to grow up in a wildly dysfunctional household, attempting to break the cycles but with virtually no support to do so. Her role within her family -- immediate and extended -- is one of mature caregiver, even to those who traditionally should be providing her guidance. Geller's resilience is remarkable, but the memoir does not feel like a victory story, rather an endurance. Her circumstances are devastating, but somehow she maintains enough softness toward the people she loves to continue to be their touchstone even when it seems to be destroying her. This is a memoir of love but also extraordinary tragedy -- both acute and drawn-out.

I marveled at Geller's ability to write both poetically and phlegmatically, as if her numbness seeped through her pen. Critically, there was no sense of apathy, but rather a sense of unease and resignation. The end of the book was exceptionally poignant: Geller doesn't "triumph" over her circumstances. But she chooses her life and herself, and does so in small, faithful ways.

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krys_kilz's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This book was HEAVY, so please be mindful of the trigger warnings before reading. With that said, this memoir felt almost easy in a way even though the subject matter was anything but. As the friend I read it with put it, it was like listening to a friend.

Geller's voice was refreshing. She doesn't sugar coat anything nor does she attempt to give her pain/trauma a deeper meaning or poetic beauty. She simply lays it all out without apology. And that raw vulnerability felt like a breath of fresh air. As a survivor, your story doesn't have to prioritize other people's comfort or inspire others with your unbelievable strength. It doesn't have to be palatable. It can just be.

I especially appreciated how Geller spoke about forgiveness and the repeating cycles of addiction and recovery. And how you cannot force other people to change no matter how much you love them.

Structuring the memoir around archived family photos, journal entries, and letters was also a really cool writing methodology.

tw: death of a parent, alcoholism, addiction, child abuse, domestic abuse

"...the longer I stood there, the more I realized I wasn't angry at myself. I wasn't even angry at my mother. I was angry at things outside our control. I was angry at the broken communities we were born into, and the godly men who perpetuated the cycles of abuse. Who told us to seek happiness in ignorance and faith in a God who seemed indifferent to our suffering. Who taught us to forgive too readily, and that forgiveness restored power, when in my experience, forgiveness had only taken my power away."

"Can't you see? Everything keeps repeating. All of this has happened before. I don't want you to end up like our parents."
Eileen took my hands, drew them down into her lap, and looked into my eyes. "I'm just happy you made it out," she said, softly. "It had to get one of us, you know?"

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sophnbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

4.0

It’s hard to ever find the words to “review” a memoir. However, this is a challenging story of a Navajo woman grieving her mother after she passes and it’s very well organized. The author, Danielle Geller, even includes photographs and documents that correspond with the passages.

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anishinaabekwereads's review

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Dog Flower by Danielle Geller is almost certainly not the Indigenous memoir most people will expect it to be. Geller, a Diné (Navajo) woman who grew up in Florida and Pennsylvania away from her homeland, documents with haunting starkness the frequent instability of her childhood, the death of her mother, and the costs addiction and violence take upon children. Needless to say there is a lot of pain within the pages of this memoir and there is little of the cultural tourism I suspect many people want or expect from Indigenous authors. Instead, we get a story of perspective, of piecing together lines and life. What we learn is the way addiction and violence are cyclical, repetitive beasts that become mundane in their breathless ability to make create a routine. Particularly, we learn what life is like for those who love and often feel induced to caregive for those who are struggling with substance abuse.It’s important to note here that this memoir is loving, is raw, and is both compelling and hard to look away from. Geller asks us to witness her history, the history of her mother, the history of her father and sisters.

Geller’s use of “the archive” is both intriguing and haunting. As you move through this memoir you see the construction of a familial archive, an archive of grief and of remembrance and presence. She pieces together her mother’s diaries, photographs, and her own memories to trace her mother’s absence from her childhood on. In that way, we watch as Geller tries to see things the way her mother might have, we watch as she tries to reconcile what may not be reconcilable. I found her use of [almost] footnotes to be a frequently effective mechanism. Buried at the bottom of many pages, in smaller font, Geller tells another story lodged within her own recountings and the effect is both academic and profoundly powerful even if their direct relation to the main body of text requires you to slow and consider.

There's a lot in this memoir that destroyed me, things I find hard to talk about, but remain with me the nonetheless. Know going in that this is not an easy book. Major CONTENT WARNINGS for addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual assauly, parent-child relationships, and death.

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peekabooreads's review

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

2.0

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