Description: Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Asian American Studies. Native American Studies. INTIMATE is a hybrid memoir and "photo album" that blends personal essay, historical documentary, and poetry to examine the tense relationship between self, society, and familial legacy in contemporary America. Typographically innovative, INTIMATE creates parallel streams, narrating the stories of Rekdal's Norwegian-American father and his mixed-race marriage, the photographer Edward S. Curtis, and Curtis's murdered Apsaroke guide, Alexander Upshaw. The result is panoramic, a completely original literary encounter with intimacy, identity, family relations, and race.
Brief description: Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee (Pantheon, 2000; Vintage, 2002), and three books of poetry. Her work has received a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship. Her poems and essays have been featured in The New York Times Magazine, NPR, and Nerve, and in many literary journals. She teaches at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Review Quotes: "Intimate Subjects includes some irresistible case studies that illustrate the myriad ways in which touch was navigated and examined in the period."--Hannah Rose Woods "London Review of Books"