accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaigns
which re-imagines family trauma through the prism of classic American cinema
a sense of place and a yearning for one’s place in the scheme of things
neglect and disinformation
Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney Anna Gurton-Wachter accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaignsJoy Is My Middle Name documents crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties. Walking uneasy cities and rural towns, talking about sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism and pop culture, these poems pull at the edges of the performed self with conversational ease. Humble, giddy, bold, empathetic, subversive, hilarious, lithe "the collection feels like a conversation with your greatest friend, over the best dinner.