About
Constantly surprising, these personal essays explore the attractions and dangers of intimacy and the violence that often arises in close relationships. Deulen's artful storytelling and dialogue also draw the reader into complicated questions about class, race, and gender.
In "Aperture," she considers how she has contributed to her autistic brother's isolation from family and from the world. "Theft" investigates her mother's romantic stories about conquistadors in the context of the Mexican heritage of her biracial family. Throughout the collection Deulen experiments formally, alternating traditional narrative with "still life" essays and collages that characterize a particular time, place, and sensibility.
Deulen is remarkable in her ability to present her own confusion and culpability, and she also writes with compassion for others, such as her own suicidal and unpredictable father or a boy in her class who sets the teacher's hair on fire. In part because she herself so poorly fits the identities she might be assigned-white in appearance, she is in fact half Latina; raised in a poor neighborhood, she has acquired an education associated with the middle class-Deulen sees "otherness" as a useless category and the enemy of intimacy, which she embraces despite its risks.
The Riots seeks to create what Frost called "a momentary stay against confusion," and Deulen investigates her own act of creation even as she uses the craft of writing to put parentheses around the chaos of continuous living.
In "Aperture," she considers how she has contributed to her autistic brother's isolation from family and from the world. "Theft" investigates her mother's romantic stories about conquistadors in the context of the Mexican heritage of her biracial family. Throughout the collection Deulen experiments formally, alternating traditional narrative with "still life" essays and collages that characterize a particular time, place, and sensibility.
Deulen is remarkable in her ability to present her own confusion and culpability, and she also writes with compassion for others, such as her own suicidal and unpredictable father or a boy in her class who sets the teacher's hair on fire. In part because she herself so poorly fits the identities she might be assigned-white in appearance, she is in fact half Latina; raised in a poor neighborhood, she has acquired an education associated with the middle class-Deulen sees "otherness" as a useless category and the enemy of intimacy, which she embraces despite its risks.
The Riots seeks to create what Frost called "a momentary stay against confusion," and Deulen investigates her own act of creation even as she uses the craft of writing to put parentheses around the chaos of continuous living.
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Reviews
"There are moments of transcendent prose in this manuscript that elevate it far beyond what we might expect of it at first blush. It manages to become more profound, and more beautiful, the more desperate and tragic its trajectory. Finally, it is a triumph of wisdom and great art."
Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North
"Fearless Confessions is such a dynamic guide to memoir writing it has inspired me to completely refine and retool the memoir I'm working on. Sue William Silverman, a faculty advisor at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, is an amazing master of the language. Her prose is as enjoyable as it is instructive. This should be an essential textbook of any creative writing course. She gives examples of mem
Melanie Rae Thon, author of In This Light
"Danielle Cadena Deulen has hit her stride and shows no signs of slowing. In a one-two punch, she has demonstrated her strength in prose and verse with recent successes in the awards circle. . . . One might think Deulen was born with a lucky streak, yet the linked essays in The Riots prove otherwise. . . . Throughout, Deulen seems both in charge of her determination yet powerless to change what li
Lori A. May, Iowa Review