Some Animal

by Ely Shipley

Overview

In this cross-genre collection, fragments of memoir rub against the language of psychomedical regimes found in a body unbound by gender binaries. Some Animal draws out dream-like resonances between the impersonal and the experiential, resulting in a collection where “the grotesque and the beautiful crash like waves eroding shore.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937658793
Publisher:	Nightboat Books
Publication date:	05/03/2018
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

ELY SHIPLEY is the author of Boy with Flowers, winner of the Barrow Street Press book prize and the Thom Gunn Award. He teaches at Western Washington University.

What People are Saying About This

TC Tolbert

“Not only a tremendous gift to those of us who are trans-masculine (and my god, what an ‘enormous relief comes with the realization / that others recognize one’s experience’) but for anyone who has ever felt ‘all alone inside / a riddle.’ Yes, YES may all of our animals find one another in the tender sear of this writing—disobeying borders in order to live in the love between.”

Editorial Reviews

03/19/2018
“When she becomes he, people are confused, some are even angry,” writes Shipley (Boy with Flowers) in this riveting exploration of what it means to come of age in a genderqueer body. The collection’s four linked memoirs adopt a ranging, hybrid form. Though steeped in Anglo-American poetry and literary theory, the book’s first order of business is making sense of how it feels to be “all alone inside// a riddle.” Shipley’s sources are those of contemporary autobiography: visceral memories of sex and sex ed (“The classroom quiet. Rapt. Wrapped in gauze”), portentous dreams (“Pale bodies in S shapes slither and glide, slick over water-skin”), unshakeable pronouncements from family members (“Grandma lets out a long sigh, ‘Well, then, if you’re a boy,/ let’s see your penis’ ”). What sets this book apart is its focused attention to the experience of defying the gender binary, of being in a body that intimates and strangers alike are bent on denying. “That’s not a girl, that’s a boy,” classmates say, in one dreamscape. “Oh. No, wait: what is it?” Mining his own life and those of his queer kin, Shipley’s book is one of hard truths, lovingly rendered. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

This remarkable, brilliant and brave poetry by Ely Shipley is an emblem for our time when US-lawmakers are making LGBTQ bodies outlaw in many states, their Christian extremism telling an entire generation they are subhuman. Float out of body with these poems then come hurtling down to land on our feet together and demand safety, equity, and a place at the table for all people. I love this book!—CA CONRAD

From the Publisher