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A review by becca_2505
Wound by Oksana Vasyakina
5.0
This book. This BOOK.
This book is deeply personal but reading it does not feel like an intrusion into Vasyakina’s life in the same way Ocean Voung’s “Time is a Mother” does (I compare them because they both are borne of the death of a mother) Vasyakina is explaining something very complex and impermanent to us which simultaneously exists only in her world and is applicable to all of ours. It is a book you want to savor but must devour. I would like to read it again and again. I am deeply impressed by Vasyakina’s ability to look at the deepest and darkest and most hidden parts of herself and wrestle with them ceaselessly. She is not afraid to deeply observe herself and her place in the world. I also admire her bravery in publishing a book which not only presents an honest, not good, version of herself, but which also discusses being lesbian in Russia.
That being said, I found the page on rape to be unsettling and perhaps under developed. Some sections with poetry and/or essays were beautiful, but others were clunky and less fluid and touching than her writing about her experience with her mother. Likely that is just a result of this being her personal way of understanding her mother’s death. Everything may not be for us to understand. Though these were some things I disliked about the book, I found her writing about her mother and her experiences with love and sexuality to be so touching and masterful that I give this book 5 stars nonetheless.
I think this is also the only piece of literature that has made me feel like I may be able to write something worthwhile (besides essays lol).
This book is deeply personal but reading it does not feel like an intrusion into Vasyakina’s life in the same way Ocean Voung’s “Time is a Mother” does (I compare them because they both are borne of the death of a mother) Vasyakina is explaining something very complex and impermanent to us which simultaneously exists only in her world and is applicable to all of ours. It is a book you want to savor but must devour. I would like to read it again and again. I am deeply impressed by Vasyakina’s ability to look at the deepest and darkest and most hidden parts of herself and wrestle with them ceaselessly. She is not afraid to deeply observe herself and her place in the world. I also admire her bravery in publishing a book which not only presents an honest, not good, version of herself, but which also discusses being lesbian in Russia.
That being said, I found the page on rape to be unsettling and perhaps under developed. Some sections with poetry and/or essays were beautiful, but others were clunky and less fluid and touching than her writing about her experience with her mother. Likely that is just a result of this being her personal way of understanding her mother’s death. Everything may not be for us to understand. Though these were some things I disliked about the book, I found her writing about her mother and her experiences with love and sexuality to be so touching and masterful that I give this book 5 stars nonetheless.
I think this is also the only piece of literature that has made me feel like I may be able to write something worthwhile (besides essays lol).