Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

HOMESICKNESS

Janine Mikosza

An extraordinary memoir that reflects on memory and finding your voice after decades of silence.

In this memoir, through both her words and illustrations, Janine Mikosza revisits the fourteen houses she lived in before turning eighteen. Homesickness explores how we remember, the myriad ways a child's trauma lives on in an adult's body, responsibility versus accountability, and the shift from silence to finding a voice. It is about finally being believed when speaking the truth, and the consequences of a decades-long silence.

Janine Mikosza is a writer with a background in visual art and a PhD in sociology. Her essays and short stories have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, The Best Australian Essays, and Meanjin.

Available products
Book Published 2022-05-01 by Ultimo Press (Hardie Grant)

Comments

"Janine Mikosza presents her extraordinary memoir about surviving childhood trauma as a conversation between two grown-up versions of herself: Janine, the author, trying gently but doggedly to probe for painful details; and Nin, the subject, whose trauma is still so raw that it muddles her memory and tenses and occasionally shuts her down entirely. As heavy as it sounds, the pair make wonderful company insightful, warm, funny as they revisit the 14 houses Janine lived in before she turned 18. In some she can only remember the bedrooms and bathrooms; others she can't set foot in at all. -- Perhaps all memoir writing necessitates a personality split, as the author tries to wrestle the subject down. That split is made literal here, in a heartbreakingly honest rendering of both the process and the story." Read more...

"Mikosza's restraint and control in writing herself like this, her awareness and self-compassion, are remarkable. This is an emotionally moving work that also pushes memoir forward." The Weekend Australian "Janine Mikosza's enthralling debut work of life-writing dramatises memoir's fraught project as a dyadic conversation between selves. It is tender and tense, wry and riven Homesickness makes something from shattered history, inventively dismantling and remaking linear memoir to do so." Felicity Plunkett, The Saturday Paper "Despite my familiarity with the subject matter of trauma memoirs, Janine Mikosza's Homesickness caught me off guard. For want of a less romantic phrase, it swept me off my feet. Her approach to writing trauma while processing trauma is revolutionary ..." The Conversation

"Brilliant. This book will be considered a masterpiece." Sarah Sentilles, award-winning author of Draw Your Weapons and Stranger Care ?