Coffee House Press
Madder: A Memoir in Weeds
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Author: Wilkinson, Marco
ISBN: 9781566896184
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2021
Binding: Quality
Language: English
Condition: New
New from the publisher
Nature 1281967
Publisher Description:
Madder, matter, mater--a weed, a state of mind, a material, a meaning, a mother. Essayist and horticulturist Marco Wilkinson searches for the roots of his own selfhood among family myths and memories.
"My life, these weeds." Marco Wilkinson uses his deep knowledge of undervalued plants, mainly weeds--invisible yet ubiquitous, unwanted yet abundant, out-of-place yet flourishing--as both structure and metaphor in these intimate vignettes. Madder combines poetic meditations on nature, immigration, queer sensuality, and willful forgetting with recollections of Wilkinson's Rhode Island childhood and glimpses of his maternal family's life in Uruguay. The son of a fierce, hard-working mother who tried to erase even the memory of his absent father from their lives, Wilkinson investigates his heritage with a mixture of anger and empathy as he wrestles with the ambiguity of his own history. Using a verdant iconography rich with wordplay and symbolism, Wilkinson offers a mesmerizing portrait of cultivating belonging in an uprooted world.
