TWC presents a FREE virtual chat about the craft of writing! We’re joined by Jeannine Ouellette to talk about her acclaimed new memoir, The Part That Burns. Jeannine will be in conversation with Amy Freeman, essayist, fiction writer, and at Development Director at The Writer’s Center.
RSVP below, and you’ll receive login info for joining the chat via our video conferencing platform, Zoom. FREE and open to the public, all times Eastern. Limited space.
We encourage you to order a copy of the book directly from the publisher or from your local, independent bookseller.
Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the memoir The Part That Burns (Split/Lip Press, 2021), the children’s book Mama Moon, and several educational titles. She has worked as a writer and editor for regional and national magazines and has served as the nonfiction editor for Orison Books and reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, narrative journalism, and poetry have appeared in numerous publications. She is the recipient of a Curt Johnson Fiction Award, Proximity Essay Award, Masters Review Emerging Writer’s Award, two recent Pushcart nominations, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Medill School of Journalism. Her work has been praised by Joyce Carol Oates as “simply beautiful, precisely imagined, poetically structured, compelling, and vivid.” Jeannine serves as a mentor for the Association of Writers & Writing Program’s Writer-to-Writer Program, teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, and is the founder and director of Elephant Rock, an independent creative writing program in Minneapolis. Jeannine earned her MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first novel.
About the Book
You can tear a thing apart and tape it back together, and it will still be torn and whole. There is no other way. In her fiercely beautiful memoir, Ouellette recollects fragments of her life and arranges them elliptically in order to see each piece as torn and whole, as something more than itself. Caught between the dramatic landscapes of Lake Superior and Casper Mountain, between her stepfather’s groping and her mother’s erratic behavior, Ouellette lives for the day she can become a mother herself, and create her own sheltering family. What she does not know is how the visceral reality of birth and motherhood will pull her back into the body she long ago abandoned, revealing new layers of pain and desire, and forcing her to choose between her idealistic vision of perfect marriage and motherhood and the birthright of her own flesh, unruly and alive. This is a story about the tenacity of family roots, the formidable undertow of trauma, and the rebellious and persistent yearning of human beings for love from each other.
Praise
“This story builds so beautifully; this voice is so confident. I love this book and am grateful it is in the world.” ~Dorothy Allison, New York Times bestselling author of Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller
“Vital, full of energy and wisdom, Jeannine Ouellette’s memoir crackles with excitement. From the shores of Lake Superior to the mountains of Wyoming to the banks of the Mississippi River, this is a story of American migration—not just of families but of spirits. I loved the brave little girl at the heart of this story, and so will you.” —Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl
With a poet’s voice and an uncanny knack for mining memory, Ouellette’s memoir-in-fragments evokes pain and beauty in equal measure. Ouellette understands the elliptical nature of memory, the way years and experience can transform our understanding of the things we did as children and the things that were done to us. She loops back and forth in time to the same seminal experiences, adding layers of depth and understanding, and in so doing shows us how her wild determination to overcome the trauma of her childhood results in a life lived on her own terms. Full of love, loss, and hard-won redemption, The Part That Burns is a fiercely beautiful memoir. —Alison McGhee, New York Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Fate and Someday.
“Here is a writer with an extraordinary gift for prose that’s complex, imagistic, and startling.” —Richard McCann, author of Mother of Sorrows
“Simply beautiful. Precisely imagined, poetically structured, compelling, and vivid.” —Joyce Carol Oates
“At turns tender and devastating, these essays are finely carved vignettes that, laid together, form a powerful portrait of one woman’s path from hard girlhood to motherhood, the grace and mettle it takes not only to survive but to flourish.” —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me and Girlhood
“Jeannine Ouellette’s memoir glows with incandescent storytelling centered around memories, motherhood, and resilience. The Part That Burns proves that life isn’t lived in a linear way. Girlhood and womanhood can exist simultaneously, our former selves meeting our present selves. Ouellette’s writing is ablaze with a burnished beauty.” ~Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About