Description
Literary Nonfiction. "With WITE OUT, Linda Norton breaks fresh ground as an autobiographical poememoirist. Combining an exploration of her familial roots, an interrogation and critique of whiteness as lived experience, a diaristic account of relationships in all their complexity, and a personal, social, and cultural history of certain precincts in American poetry’s late 20th-century avant-garde, WITE OUT is a masterpiece."—John Keene
"WITE OUT is a gorgeous book. Its spare, crystal-clear, non-confessional prose highlights feminine honesty rather than masculine concealment and makes you both sad and glad to be human. A memoir about a single working mother coping in a rough world she sees all too clearly, this is a courageous book about a courageous life; I couldn't put it down."—Norman Fischer
"Reading WITE OUT also made me wonder where that missing letter went? What did it stand for and what was crouching in the lean-to of its variously broken loop? Horror? Responsibility? It’s just that how to take responsibility for horror has always seemed impossible because it means approaching the mass that assures annihilation. Whiteness is a black hole in this regard, but Linda Norton braves its event horizon, its point of no return, giving us leave to let go absolution to abolish, and fray the singularity to survive into some other dance we’ve been dancing, but denying, all along. In the proliferation of such release, we might hold on."—Fred Moten
Author Bio
Linda Norton is the author of THE PUBLIC GARDEN: POEMS AND HISTORY (Pressed Wafer, 2011), a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and two chapbooks (Hesitation Kit, 2007, and Dark White, 2019). She grew up in Boston, lived in Brooklyn for many years, and moved to California in 1995. Currently a writing consultant to labor organizers and an occasional instructor at San Francisco State University, she has also worked in libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses. She is a 2020 columnist-in-residence for SFMoMA's Open Space. A dual citizen of the US and Ireland, where, in 2014, she received a grant from the US Embassy in Dublin for an exhibition of her collages at the Dock Arts Centre. She lives in Oakland.
Author City: OAKLAND, CA USA