Woman House: Essays and Assemblages (Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction)

A compelling and inventive memoir exploring how pain and pleasure are passed down through generations of women 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 the forms and psyches of these two profoundly connected family members.At once raw and refined, narrati