Everything and nothing at all : essays / Jenny Heijun Wills.
"From Hilary Weston Prize-winning author Jenny Heijun Wills comes a new collection of piercing, breathtaking essays on beauty, identity, and language -- as well as the grey zones that exist between and within these notions of self. As an adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the spaces of race and ethnicity. As a polyamorous, pansexual femme, she occupies a liminality between family -- adopted, biological, chosen -- and "freedom;" queerness and heteronormativity; monogamy and a constellation of love. As a person who self-harms to cope with mental illness, she moves between the desire to be beautiful and the urge to make herself ugly, preening in the limelight while daily wishing her body would disappear. And as a parent with a lifelong eating disorder, her love language is to feed, but she finds it near-impossible to consume anything herself. These facets of Jenny's personhood have served as both the anchors she has clung to, in the time before self-discovery and understanding, and the harsh parameters of what others now imagine she can be. Everything and Nothing At All weaves together literary criticism, cultural context, and personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge. Yet Jenny is acutely aware of the cost of this knowledge: the more she uncovers, the more parts of herself she must reconcile. And though she is guided by those who came before -- her Korean grandmother, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, even Emily Brontë, when read with intention -- and the lovers she has sewn into her life, they cannot shield her from the combined weight of this knowledge. It feels at once like everything she has been seeking in order to set herself free, and that which threatens to extinguish her, one day, into nothing at all. Devastating, illuminating, and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Jenny's life, where she lingers always at the intersections within the intersections of identity."-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781039009844 (hardcover)
- Physical Description: 235 pages ; 22 cm
- Publisher: Toronto, ON : Alfred A. Knopf Canada, [2024]
- Copyright: ©2024
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Wills, Jenny Heijun. Body image. Pansexual people > Identity. Self-perception. Authors, Canadian (English) > 21st century > Biography. |
Genre: | Biographies. Autobiographies. Essays. Personal narratives. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cookstown Branch | 819.46 Wills | 31681010385896 | NONFIC | Available | - |
- Random House, Inc.
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION ⢠The Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2024 ⢠CBC's Best Canadian Non-Fiction of 2024
"Here is my disconnect: the private and public self. My mind and body. The real person and curated spectacle. . . . Are there actual roots with which to fasten this performance to anything real?"
As a transnational and transracial adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the fraught spaces of ethnicity and belonging. As a pan-polyam individual, she lives between types of familyâadopted, biological, chosenâand "community"; heternormativity and queerness; commitment and a constellation of love. And as a parent with a lifelong eating disorder, who self-harms to cope with mental illness, her love language is to feed, but daily she wishes her body would disappear. These facets of Wills' being have served as the anchors she once clung to and the harsh parameters of what others now imagine she can be.
Everything and Nothing At All weaves together a lifetime of literary criticism, cultural study, and a personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge. And though the experiences of accumulating this knowledge have often been shot through with pain, Wills spins these threads into priceless goldâa radical, fearless vision of kinship and family. Devastating, illuminating, and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Wills' self, transforming them into something moreâsomething that could be everything.