Overview

"""Could there be something humbling and revolutionary in understanding myself as a site of contamination?"" Groundglass takes shape atop a polluted aquifer in Minnesota, beside trains that haul fracked crude oil, as Kathryn Savage confronts the transgressions of U.S. Superfund sites and brownfields against land, groundwater, neighborhoods, and people. Drawing on her own experiences growing up on the fence lines of industry and the parallel realities of raising a young son while grieving a father dying of a cancer with known environmental risk factors, Savage traces concentric rings of connection-between our bodies, one another, our communities, and our ecosystem. She explores the porous boundary between self and environment, and the ambiguous yet growing body of evidence linking toxins to disease. Equal parts mourning poem and manifesto for environmental justice, Groundglass reminds us that no living thing exists on its own."

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9781566896405

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Reviews

A lyrical exploration of grief and ecology. . . . [A] prismatic debut in the guise of a grief memoir, but the narrative encompasses ecological investigations of brownfields and Superfund sites. . . . Savage creates a compelling meditation that flows beyond the typical stylings of memoir, journalism, and theory. An interrogative, existential crisis at the center of an ongoing ecological one. --Kirkus Groundglass is a work of beauty--like the superfunds Kathryn Savage investigates, which green and bloom and renew despite it all. Reading Savage's writing is like taking a walk beside a friend with an extraordinary eye for all the unlikely and remarkable details along the path, the ones you would have missed if you had to walk it alone. --Kathryn Nuernberger How does one build a home? A family? What are the ways they might come apart? I myself grew up within wind's distance of Love Canal. In times marked by Chernobyl, Fukushima, by fracking and spills, compromised air and water, the relationship between toxicity and the bloodstream feels intimate and immediate. This probing book asks the hard questions in a compelling blend of memoir, essay, biography and reportage. The inside is the outside now. The outside is inside. --Kazim Ali Kathryn Savage roots down into one broken place--a place most would rather overlook--and listens. Here, every relationship the author tends--with herself, with her son, with the father that begot her and the neighborhood where he raised her up--twists into unsettling shapes thanks to what this land has been forced to hold. Groundglass is both a commitment and a grappling, and for that reason it will stay with me for a very long time. --Elizabeth Rush Through exquisitely honed language and poetic imagery, Kathryn Savage skillfully juxtaposes her father's cancer with the ecological violence she witnessed at toxic Superfund sites, crafting an unflinching portrayal of 'the world as body.' --Diane Wilson

Author Information

Kathryn Savage's writing has appeared inAmerican Short Fiction, Ecotone Magazine,theVirginia Quarterly Review, BOMB,and the anthologyRewilding: Poems for the Environment. Recipient of the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, she has received support from fellowships and residencies including the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ucross Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She lives with her family in Minneapolis and teaches creative writing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

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