Twenty Writers Define Home In All of Its Complexity and Variety
"Where do I live? I don't have a ready answer, not really, but I've
realized there's something I like about not having an answer. And indeed
something of that spirit--a curious, open engagement with the now, in
its slippery and uncertain character--animates this book." --Mark Doty,
from his Introduction
In a shifting world, concepts of place and home take many forms. In
Open House, Mark Doty gathers an impressive group of writers to
describe their contemporary sense of home. Victoria Redel lives her
teenage years from inside a fifteen-pound body cast--loving and hating
the loss of her body; Barbara Hurd finds that within a cave, the absence
of all light allows for clarity of vision; and Andrea Barrett wipes
filth from a sill in her Brooklyn apartment only to realize that the
dirt is actually "ash of buildings, ash of planes. Ash of people."
Surroundings--walls, trees, or states of mind--are defined by our
reactions to them. These essays are about how the mind can create a
home--for a moment, or for a lifetime.
Contributors include Bernard Cooper, Carol Muske-Dukes, Deborah Lott,
Elizabeth McCracken, Mary Morris, and Terry Tempest Williams.