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toasternoodle 's review for:
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
by Alicia Elliott
The kind of essays you finish reading, then immediately want to reread, and actually end up rereading on the spot. The kind of collection I expect to read only once or twice a year (Thick + Minor Feelings in 2020). This writing was so sharp, so unassuming, that I jumped out mid-shower to bookmark a section in the audiobook for later. My favourite piece was about lice, of all things. Alicia Elliot comes in SWINGING with receipts on Canadian colonialism, epigenetic trauma, diet and poverty, racism as dark matter, photography as historical and contemporary oppression, the power dynamics of sexual violence, the challenges of her brilliant mother's lifelong bipolar disorder, the history of her and her loved ones' titular depression, coping — and more, all in 250pgs/7hrs.
These essays, like the author, are concise, cutting and confident. I don't know how this collection is so underrated/passed over in the online literary community. Elliott is not a sociologist like Cottom or poet like Hong but she writes with the fluent anger of both. Her metaphors are simple and ruthless. Her clarity is demanding. Her range, braiding sciences and critical scholarship, social awareness and historical knowledge, self-reflection and inquisitive discourse, compassion and anger, is exactly what I look for in essay writing (and course syllabi, and mentors, and friends). The essay on Sontag and Photography in particular is something I should've read back in college as a photojournalist. I can't recommend this book enough.
These essays, like the author, are concise, cutting and confident. I don't know how this collection is so underrated/passed over in the online literary community. Elliott is not a sociologist like Cottom or poet like Hong but she writes with the fluent anger of both. Her metaphors are simple and ruthless. Her clarity is demanding. Her range, braiding sciences and critical scholarship, social awareness and historical knowledge, self-reflection and inquisitive discourse, compassion and anger, is exactly what I look for in essay writing (and course syllabi, and mentors, and friends). The essay on Sontag and Photography in particular is something I should've read back in college as a photojournalist. I can't recommend this book enough.