Woman house : essays and assemblages / Lauren W. Westerfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Westerfield, Lauren W., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Westerfield, Lauren W.

Women authors, American--Biography.

Women authors, American.

Mothers and daughters.

Women--United States--Social conditions.

Women.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

vii, 213 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2026]

Summary:

"For years, Lauren W. Westerfield looked back at her childhood as an imaginative playscape lovingly crafted by her artist mother. But in truth, theirs was always a fraught relationship, close yet turbulent. It wouldn't be until her mid-twenties that Westerfield would learn that her mother was assaulted while living as a single woman in 1970s Los Angeles, or until her mid-thirties when caretaking for her now chronically ill mother during pandemic lockdown would reveal how that earlier incident and its ripple effects had shaped both their lives. The essays and assemblages in this book plumb the depths of two women's experiences, exploring the pain and pleasure they find in their bodies, in culture, and in their own art. Violence, beauty, and love reverberate and dissipate and shape both the psyches and physical forms of these two profoundly connected family members. At once raw and refined, narrative and lyrical, nostalgic and blunt, the stories and images presented here dive deep into Westerfield's life-from childhood to adulthood-passing through innocence, self-discovery and familial tethers. In unpacking her mother's history and the complexities of their relationship, Westerfield finds herself confronted with her own story: one grounded in a yearning for agency and individuation, of a body and mind groomed to be at odds with one another, of a feminist politics examining deeply rooted patriarchal understandings of beauty, agency, and power. Part memoir, part critical sense-making, part reckoning with family, identity, illness, addiction, art, and inheritance, Woman House draws on diverse inspirations in an attempt to recontextualize the female body-in danger, in pleasure, in portraiture, in proximity, in resistance-and challenge the structures that silence and restrict female expression"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

A broom to remove the dust

On becoming

Twenty-seven

Interlude : background music

Woman house

Double exposure

Interlude : milk clock

Still life

Sequence of events

Breach

Encaustic

Interlude : salt

Distance instructions

A kind of chrysalis

Interlude : brushwork

Pentimento.

Notes:

Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction

Other Format:

Online version Westerfield, Lauren W. Woman house

ISBN:

9781625349231

1625349238

OCLC:

1524233554