Under My Bed and Other Essays (American Lives)

From Publisher:

Jody Keisner was raised in rural Nebraska towns by a volatile father and kind but passive mother. As a young adult living alone for the first time, she began a nighttime ritual of checking under her bed each night, not sure who she was afraid of finding. An intruder? A monster? Her father? Keisner's fears mature as she becomes a wife and mother, and the boogeyman under the bed shape-shifts, though its shapes are no less frightening--a young aunt's drowning, the "chest chomp" in the classic horror movie The Thing, a diagnosis of a chronic autoimmune disease, the murder of a young college student, an eccentric grandmother's belief in reincarnation and her dying advice: "Don't be afraid."

In Under My Bed and Other Essays, Jody Keisner searches for the roots of the violence and fear that afflict women, starting with the working-class midwestern family she was adopted into and ending with her own experience of mothering daughters. In essays both literary and experimental, Keisner illustrates the tension between the illusion of safety, our desire for control, and our struggle to keep the things we fear from reaching out and pulling us under.

Product Info

ISBN: 1496230477

ISBN-13: 9781496230478

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Year: 9/1/2022 12:00:01 AM

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

TheMidtownScholarBookstore

Address: 3401 North Sixth Street Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Website: https://www.midtownscholar.us

Country: United States