"A lyrical, innovative memoir about sex, parenting, and addiction." —Kirkus Reviews
“This gorgeous memoir from Fitzgerald is a collage of the author’s most potent writing… equal parts rock 'n' roll and lyrical musings, with sharp, jagged truths and moments of gooey softness.” —Booklist
“Fitzgerald creates an intimate and lyrical archive of the contents of her memory that, on the outset, seem somewhat disconnected but work together to form a holistic view of Fitzgerald’s experiences as a scorned child, a sexual assault survivor, a radical sex worker, a devoted mother, and a ‘monster.’” —Autostraddle
“The structure that dictates the pace of this collection is genius... some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered.” —Glassworks
"Experimental in the best way, connecting dots and drawing parallels that make for a stunning read." —them.
“A short, sharp, experimental manifesto about motherhood, sex work, and addiction.” —Seven Stories
“A sunrise seen from the roof of a Las Vegas apartment, a Midwestern field of hemlock, the low popcorn ceiling of a strip club, Enjoy Me among My Ruins takes us on a precise and devastating voyage through American spaces both familiar and hidden. It’s a lived-in brilliant book full of indelible, physical images that hold and enrich a theoretical analysis of work, sex, sex work, love, and community within a nation seemingly bent on punishment and annihilation. I am thankful this book exists while also wishing we did not live in a time and place where it felt so necessary.” —Joni Murphy, author of Talking Animals
“Haunting and powerful, Enjoy Me among My Ruins traverses the American West and Midwest, conjuring the women and queers who have been forces in Fitzgerald’s life, and asking them to come along on her journey to destroy the contradictions of heteropatriarchy and dance upon its grave.” —Chris Belcher, author of Pretty Baby
“Trust Juniper Fitzgerald to lead you through desert nights, early 2000s punk clubs, VIP rooms, childhood homes—and further, into a motley of emotion and memory. Fitzgerald knows complexity—and so she employs a mixture of the epistolary form, braided lyrical essay, allusion, stream-of-consciousness, and narrative storytelling. Enjoy Me among My Ruins revels in both experiential wisdom and craft.” —Amber Dawn, author of Sub Rosa
“Enjoy Me among My Ruins weaves together streams of experience, exploration, nuance, rawness, trauma, and hope so fluidly that it becomes a powerful reminder of how interconnected they truly are. It is rare that we see a story of a mother, a sex worker, an academic, a vigilant survivor, an unbothered child ethnographer so seamlessly told in one breath. This book is the unvarnished poetry that we hope to write when we go to our journals.” —Kate D’Adamo, partner, Reframe Health and Justice Collective
2022-03-22
A sex worker from Nebraska offers a series of vignettes illustrating her complex relationships with motherhood and her past.
Rather than a linear narrative, Fitzgerald, author of the children’s book How Mamas Love Their Babies, bounces among times, places, and formats to tell her story. Some of the fragments are descriptions of her relationships with women, anecdotes that range from a description of a trauma her grandmother experienced in Appalachia to a memory of “nuzzling the soft spaces of [a former lover’s] neck” and missing “the way she speaks Greek when she doesn’t want me to know that she’s talking shit.” Other chapters are brief scenes: a gathering of queer women on a feminist pornography set describing their experiences of motherhood while the author breastfeeds her new baby; the author reading her phone-sex clients “entire books on feminist theory” in order to pay her grocery bill. Elsewhere, Fitzgerald presents transcriptions of her childhood diary entries, many of which are addressed to X-Files actor Gillian Anderson. Collectively, the pieces illustrate the unique story of a sex worker with a doctorate in sociology attempting to raise a child while grappling with her past experiences of sexual assault. The author alludes to—but does not expand upon—additional traumatic experiences, including giving birth to a stillborn child and struggles with addiction. At its best, this “kaleidoscopic” text glimmers with vulnerability and wit. Fitzgerald is a talented wordsmith, and many of the fragments read like poetry. The book leaves some central questions unanswered—most notably, why Fitzgerald’s family “threatened to kill” her—resulting in a text that leaves readers with a visceral stab of emotion rather than a clear picture of the author’s trajectory, purpose, or intentions. Still, the author is a sharp observer and talented writer, and readers will hope for more work from her in the future.
A lyrical, innovative memoir about sex, parenting, and addiction.
