Autumn Song: Essays on Absence
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press | American Lives SeriesISBN: 9781496235800Genre: Creative Nonfiction/EssaysPrice: $19.95We all live lives littered with what we leave behind: Places we once lived. Friendships we once had. Dreams we once envisioned. The people we once were. Each new day we attempt to find a way to continue living despite the absences we experience because of loss and disappointment, injustice and inequity, change and the passage of time.
Autumn Song: Essays on Absence invites readers into one Black woman’s experiences encountering absences, seeing beyond the empty spaces, and grasping at the glimmers of glory that remain. In a world marred with brokenness, these glimmers speak to the possibility of grieving losses, healing heartache, and allowing ourselves to be changed.
Patrice Gopo is an award-winning essayist who writes stories steeped in themes of place, belonging, and home. She is the author of two essay collections: Autumn Song: Essays on Absence (University of Nebraska Press American Lives Series) and All the Colors We Will See (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection). Her debut picture book, All the Places We Call Home, is based on one of her essays. When she’s not writing, Patrice hosts the podcast Picture Books Are for Grown-Ups Too! because she believes in the power of stories to help build connections between people. Please visit www.patricegopo.com to learn more.
Reviews
Patrice Gopo deftly plunges the reader into a life that weaves the personal with the political—and spotlights patterns of beauty amid the chaotic and often racist American fabric, both past and present. Gopo’s prose is vivid and gorgeous.
Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and Circa
This gorgeous collection of essays about home and belonging cast a spell on me, with its gentle yet sharp observations and evocative sense of place . . . Underlying these contemplative essays is an urgency to make sense of a world that often feels chaotic and frightening.
Geeta Kothari, author of I Brake for Moose and Other Stories