Emerson Whitney is a poet, professor, and with the release of Heaven, memoirist. Heaven, their first prose book, shows the diversity of their background. Whitney is unconcerned with linearity, at times seemingly unwilling to hold onto a topic for too long. They examine their relationships, their experience with gender and with disability, and literary critique, with their mother at the heart of it all. Heaven is fragmented, a tangle of all the different stories that come together to make a person.
There are a lot of transgender narratives in memoir being published within the last ten years, and so many of them are focused on the act of transition itself–as Whitney notes, of the top books on Amazon marked as Transgender, the word "Becoming" appears in almost every title. Most commonly, they come in one of two forms: a beginning with a coming out, and charting the painful journey towards some kind of radical self-acceptance, or a long and twisted narrative of a deeply unhappy apparently cis person with a neat coda saying, "And then I came out! It was terrific. The end." In Heaven, Whitney has produced a memoir that weaves their experience of gender through the story of their life without becoming overly fixated on the mechanics, the tragedy or the ecstasy of transition.
"This is the truth: I want femininity to be roomier. More enormous. Gender like a tub, not anybody else's so much anymore. But maybe there's no real escape."
In Heaven, there is no mistaking the author. Whitney's voice is tangible and intimate, I felt often while reading that they were speaking directly to me. Their story unfolds as stories told between friends often do, moments of deep and heartfelt emotion interspersed with casual divergences into theory, history, or personal anecdotes. Read over many sittings, reading Heaven is getting to know someone new, someone who reveals themselves slowly. Devoured in on long reading, as I did the first time I picked it up, it's a long night with an old friend, a steady unraveling that veers into strange territories and leaves you vaguely shaken the next day.
Early on, Whitney promises “I can’t explain myself without making a mess,” and then proceeds to make a mess for two hundred pages.
Whitney introduces etymology–the history of the words they're using–frequently throughout the book, to further explain a made point, or as an attempt to understand the events they're reflecting upon. It feels like a magic trick, like Whitney is at turns pulling me aside to add a little extra color and meditating on their own writing. After describing the ways that their brothers took to nursing from their mother, and their own difficulties nursing as an infant, Whitney describes the origins of the word mammary. They describe Mammary as "perhaps imitative of the sound made while sucking," and in three short paragraphs, bring the etymology to the "ache of wanting," the various forms that the word "mama" has taken through the centuries, and to the word mastectomy, ending with the line "I'm thinking about giving an account of myself." It floats on its own, white space above and below. If any short excerpt of Heaven is definitive, this one is. From history, to the chore of embodiment, to their mother, to self-reflection, in fewer words than it took me to describe it.
"Mammary is a word that's likely derived from a natural sound in baby talk, perhaps imitative of the sound made while sucking–ma. The ache of wanting is enormous. I drank off the plug like a drunk. I'm not ashamed. Mama is from 1707; mum is from 1823; mummy in this sense is from 1839; mommy, 1844; momma, 1852; and mom, 1867."
Throughout Heaven, Whitney wanders. A span of a few short pages will move rapidly from an intimate detail of their early life, to a contemporary conversation with a friend or colleague, to etymology or theory. It’s impressive, the way they shift from a narrative voice, to an academic voice, to a casual, friendly one, and most of the time it works. The book flows, the shifts in topic and tone don’t feel disjointed, the dives into theory don’t feel detached. It can feel dizzying, at times, to move so quickly, and once or twice I found myself lost, rereading pages to pick up the thread of the conversation Whitney’s having with themselves. This messiness, the fluidity, underscores the messages of the book. Early on, Whitney promises “I can’t explain myself without making a mess,” and then proceeds to make a mess for two hundred pages. Life, at its simplest, is messy, unruly, and Whitney’s depiction of their own life doesn’t bother with sanitation. They unfold in front of you, mess and all, and ask if you’d like to take a closer look. I recommend you do.
(Disclaimer: Emerson Whitney is a member of the faculty at Goddard College; while I have never been a direct student of theirs, they have acted as one of my advisors during my undergraduate degree.)