I decided to totally revamp my course, Modernism on the Margins, for the fall. The course explores modernist literature on the margins of the canon, specifically, literature that examines and critiques the newly solidified categories of race and sexuality. (With close attention to the lasting impacts of the colonial project.) I love the class and learn so much each time I teach it as students grapple — often for the first time — with texts like Cane by Jean Toomer and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. But given what is happening in the world today, I decided the course needed a more explicit link to our contemporary culture.
Enter In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I had the book on my shelf and was eager to start reading, as her collection of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties, still lingers in my mind. As of this post, I am halfway through the compelling and illuminating memoir. (If my concentration wasn’t so damaged from the spring pivot and too much time online, I am sure I would be done with the entire book by now!) I plan on pairing it with Barnes’s weird but gorgeous novel, Nightwood, as both traverse what Scott Herring calls “the under world.” The dark side, the shadow side, the underworld: whatever you want to call it, the experiences and people therein are both familiar and surprising, revealing what we all know but have likely repressed thanks to socialization and surveillance. For the sake of Machado’s memoir, this underworld is one of abuse, particularly abuse within a queer relationship. Intimate partner violence in general is not something our society discusses openly or frequently so for Machado to take the deep dive into intimate queer abuse is very valuable.
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