A “Cascade” of Forms

Excerpt from PageBoy Magazine VII, 2015

I was invited by PageBoy to contribute this essay, a response of My Body is a Book of Rules written by my friend Elissa Washuta. Elissa and I studied creative non-fiction together at the University of Washington, in particular the art of literary collage.

Collage—whether visual or written—is defined by its use of parataxis: to create a pattern that is less concerned with overt transitions and connection-making between sections in favor of patterns emerging through juxtaposition and contrast, and it is Washuta’s use of collage and multiple genres that formally enacts the layered contradictions and messiness of identity construction.

“In her debut book, My Body Is a Book of Rules, Elissa Washuta invites, no insists, the reader consider (grapple with, experience) the role of inherited forms in the construction of identity.”

Cover Art: “Sara and Her Dog,” Anne Petty