A review by jaan
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
I don't think that Elliott is a bad writer, but I do think her rhetoric could use a lot of work. In many chapters, I'd go as far as to say that her essay is rhetorically unsound. I'm thinking specifically of the chapter, "Not Your Noble Savage," which, while it doesn't appear in this edition, I read from my friend's copy. I am uncomfortable with some of the behavior she unapologetically admits to, such as touching/feeling her cousins' regalia without their knowledge or consent. In "Extraction Mentalities," she violates Gricean's maxim of relevancy, pulling a "Gotcha!" move on the reader when she asks the reader if they thought her father was the villain of the story. I also just cannot tell what the assumptions girding her work are, especially those relating to her privacy/vulnerability ethics, and that makes me wary of any writer.
I want to note "Forbidden Rooms and Intentional Forgetting" in particular (blanket content note henceforth for sexual assault). In this chapter, Elliot describes intentional forgetting as an active coping mechanism for survivors to help them move on with their lives. She compares it to denial, which is treated as a passive mechanism, and asks the reader what the real difference between the two is. Concluding that there is very little, she advocates intentional forgetting for survivors of trauma, including sexual assault. I am on board with this, as intentional forgetting is a practice I have successfully employed for ~10 years now. However, her description of sexual assault in this chapter is moderate-to-graphic, and there is no warning to her readers that it is coming. It is unforgivable to me that in a chapter wherein Elliott expresses her right to both vulnerability and privacy regarding her sexual assault, including her right to intentionally forget it, she does not include a content warning at the beginning of the chapter. I want to be clear: my issue is not that she wrote about sexual assault without warning. It is also not that she wrote about sexual assault at all; she has a right to do so in pursuit of healing. My issue is the hypocrisy: by not including the content warning, Elliott has denied her readers the practice of intentionally forgetting their trauma. She does not practice what she preaches. It is dangerous, in my opinion, to celebrate an writer who is well-liked, well-cited, and well-published who is not thinking critically about the praxis of her theory.
There are some moments I really appreciate in this memoir. "34 Grams is a Dose" is a strong read, for example. My classmates also enjoyed "Sontag, in Snapshots," though I personally did not. Finally, I appreciate the points she made in "Two Truths and a Lie" about the luxury of being divorced from their writing that is enjoyed by male authors. She notes that when women write fiction, it is assumed that the work is more autobiographical—that is, drawn from her real life—than if a man wrote it. Men are allowed to make art; women only ever tell their story.
Worth a read.
I want to note "Forbidden Rooms and Intentional Forgetting" in particular (blanket content note henceforth for sexual assault). In this chapter, Elliot describes intentional forgetting as an active coping mechanism for survivors to help them move on with their lives. She compares it to denial, which is treated as a passive mechanism, and asks the reader what the real difference between the two is. Concluding that there is very little, she advocates intentional forgetting for survivors of trauma, including sexual assault. I am on board with this, as intentional forgetting is a practice I have successfully employed for ~10 years now. However, her description of sexual assault in this chapter is moderate-to-graphic, and there is no warning to her readers that it is coming. It is unforgivable to me that in a chapter wherein Elliott expresses her right to both vulnerability and privacy regarding her sexual assault, including her right to intentionally forget it, she does not include a content warning at the beginning of the chapter. I want to be clear: my issue is not that she wrote about sexual assault without warning. It is also not that she wrote about sexual assault at all; she has a right to do so in pursuit of healing. My issue is the hypocrisy: by not including the content warning, Elliott has denied her readers the practice of intentionally forgetting their trauma. She does not practice what she preaches. It is dangerous, in my opinion, to celebrate an writer who is well-liked, well-cited, and well-published who is not thinking critically about the praxis of her theory.
There are some moments I really appreciate in this memoir. "34 Grams is a Dose" is a strong read, for example. My classmates also enjoyed "Sontag, in Snapshots," though I personally did not. Finally, I appreciate the points she made in "Two Truths and a Lie" about the luxury of being divorced from their writing that is enjoyed by male authors. She notes that when women write fiction, it is assumed that the work is more autobiographical—that is, drawn from her real life—than if a man wrote it. Men are allowed to make art; women only ever tell their story.
Worth a read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, and Sexual assault