Overview

"Life is like a theater run: a limited engagement. And her approach to life, as author Jacquelyn Shah renders it in her memoir-essay collection, is grounded in limited engagement with the world and its people. Not a tell-all, how-to, or straightforward chronological narrative, and not a work from the woe-is-me angle, Limited Engagement is a creative exploration of how she came to be rooted in living and writing after a failed suicide attempt at age twenty, incited by a conviction that existence is absurd. Dubbing it a ""gallimaufry"" (jumble or medley of things), Shah has developed a work whose innards consist of sundry gobbets: narrative; quotes; excerpts of letters; poems; critiques and grievances; historical tidbits; lists; metaphor and language play. She subscribes to what David Shields said in his Reality Hunger: A Manifesto: ""(Ambitious) memoir isn't fundamentally a chronicle of experience; rather, memoir is the story of consciousness contending with experience."""

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Can a woman be a tour de force? Of course, she can. Jacquelyn Shah certainly seems to be in her memoir, Limited Engagement: A Way of Living. What begins with a common childhood adventure into the wilderness behind her house becomes Shah's sometimes turbulent voyages to other places and relationships with other people, while trying to navigate the ever-judgmental opinions of her parents. Arching over everything are society's expectations for women, which Shah found limiting, suffocating, and rudely underestimating, seemingly even from the start. This memoir lulls readers into Shah's experiences by sharing moments from her personal quote journal and letters, only to jolt us back to reality with revelations that changed her life and her outlook on it. Shah does not shy away from the difficult, including her own attempt at suicide, the loss of her virginity, and the sexism she encountered on the job and from her husband's co-workers. This book could just as well be the story of most American women who are passionate about women's rights. What stood out to me as I read the top manuscripts for the contest is Shah's unmitigated passion for life, language, and peace. Judge for the 2022 Kenneth Johnston Nonfiction Book Contest

Author Information

Jacquelyn Shah, iconoclast, pacifist holds: A.B. English-Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, Rutgers U; M.A. English, Drew U; M.F.A. and Ph.D.-English literature/creative writing-poetry, U of Houston.She has received grants from the University of Houston, Houston Arts Alliance, and the Puffin Foundation. Her publications include a chapbook, small fry; a full-length book, What to Do with Red; and poems in Rhino, Gyroscope Review, The Texas Review, Vine Leaves (Australia), The Lake (UK), Plath Profiles, Rushing Thru the Dark, Autumn 2022, The Best of Choeofpleirn Press, Winter 2022, et al. She was Literal Latté's 2018 Food Verse Contest winner.

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