Fire and Stone

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8203-5044-8
Verlag: University of Georgia Press

Buch, Englisch, 156 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 141 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 308 g

Reihe: Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction

The questions that drive Priscilla Long’s Fire and Stone are the questions asked by the painter Paul Gauguin in the title of his 1897 painting: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? These questions look beyond every- day trivialities to ponder the essence of our origins.

Using her own story as a touchstone, Long explores our human roots and how they shape who we are today. Her personal history encompasses childhood as an identical twin on a dairy farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; the turmoil, social change, and music of the 1960s; the suicide of a sister; and a life in art in the Paci c Northwest. Here, memoir extends the threads of the writer’s individual and very personal life to science, to history, and to ancestors, both literary and genetic, back to the Neanderthals.

Long uses profoundly poetic personal essays to draw larger connections and to ask compelling questions about identity. Framed by four distinctive sections, Fire and Stone transcends genre and evolves into a sweeping elegy on what it means to be human.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Long, Priscilla

Über Autor(innen)

Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based writer, writing teacher, editor, and author of, most recently, Crossing Over: Poems (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015) and The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life (Wallingford Press, 2010).