An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance - Signed Edition

Raised in a rural Oregon town plagued by poverty, artist and writer Jaydra Johnson excelled in school and chased upward mobility, desperate to escape the adversity that she saw as her inheritance — and the certainty that she grew up as trash. Johnson's powerful memoir, Low (Fonograf Editions) — selected by acclaimed writer Maggie Nelson as the winner of Fonograf Editions' inaugural essay contest — tells tHTMLhe redemptive story of an artist who came to embrace her lineage. In the tradition of other outcast artists who have spun refuse into art, the essays in Low reclaim trash as a precious resource and a medium for storytelling. In this bracing debut, Johnson describes her life and art, including the cut paper collages that punctuate these essays, in vivid detail while offering smart and visceral reflections on a wide range of literary and visual artists who have inspired her, from Shakespeare to contemporary conceptual artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. As Nelson writes, "Low's provocations and attestations stayed with me long after I turned its final page. I found myself rooting hard for its narrator — while also realizing that there is no need, as she has clearly found her way, and is now our teacher." An indispensable meditation on poverty and art, and a compelling corrective to conventional memoirs about overcoming disadvantage, Low announces the arrival of an important new voice in creative nonfiction.
 
Missing: The Statue of Liberty. A lost Raphael self-portrait last seen with a military unit named Hellfish. A manuscript by the artist Sophie Calle. Your local scorpion population. An astronaut-parent. A housekeeper. A leg. Unfiled files. D.B. Cooper. That volcano erupting behind you. The present tense… These are just a handful of the many disappearances Diana Oropeza explores in her startling debut book, An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance (Future Tense), a hybrid work of flash fiction and creative nonfiction that haunts at every turn. Many voices, named and unnamed, document the unresolved nature of disappearance and unending grief that follows in its wake. As you read, the book itself disappears in your hands.