Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures

by Julie Marie Wade

Paperback edition of book, with the hardcover image.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Essays, Queer

160 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2010

About the author

Born in Seattle in 1979, Julie Marie Wade completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She has received the Chicago Literary Award in Poetry (2004), the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize (2004), the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize (2005), the Literal Latte Nonfiction Award (2006), two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes (2006, 2010), the AWP Intro Journals Award for Nonfiction (2009), the American Literary Review Nonfiction Prize (2010), the Arts & Letters Nonfiction Prize (2010), an Al Smith Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council (2010), the Thomas J. Hruska Nonfiction Prize (2011), the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir (2011), the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize (2012), a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund (2012), and seven Pushcart Prize nominations. Julie is the author of two collections of lyric nonfiction, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and Small Fires (Sarabande Books, 2011); two collections of poetry, Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Postage Due (White Pine Press, 2013); the creative nonfiction chapbook Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Press, 2013); and the forthcoming When I Was Straight: Poems (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014). She lives with her partner Angie Griffin in the Sunshine State and teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami.

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous lyric essays with inventive structure and artful language.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book, a journey through a childhood that, while unique in many respects, is strangely universal in how it perfectly captures (and perhaps partly explains) how lost so many people are in this generation. At times lyric enough to be prose poetry, it's also an intricate, remarkable narrative of "coming of age" and yet coming completely into a singular state of Self. A remarkable book by a remarkable new writer.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read much of Julie Marie Wade's work before I read this book, but I have read a lot about her! I was not disappointed, as I found Wishbone to be a fantastic (almost surreal) blend of the lyrical essay and the memoir. Yes, this "memoir in fractures" so to speak is a story of a life, but the chapters could easily be read as individual essays and explorations of identity and emotion. A beautiful read!

[Alex Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore Wade's writing style. Her words are gorgeous and the structure is lyrically stunning. There are so many lines I could use as examples for how beautiful it is. It's just everything. I can't imagine how much time she spent with every single word, just perfecting it in a way that feels effortless. I found myself rereading sometimes out of pure enjoyment.

I loved the later essays in this where she ties together fragments of moments and feelings into something that has greater meaning. It's a masterful piece of writing.

I did struggle a lot with the second part. Unlike the others which are about her life, it's a surreal dreamlike state in which Wade goes back in time to see her family before she was born. The language was pretty in that section, but I struggled to follow it. I get what she was going for, but it didn't work for me at all. The rest of the book was wonderful, though.

I'd highly recommend if you like lyric essays or memoir poetry. Gorgeously written piece of literature.

[Paige Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty imagery of emotional peril and palm fronds, cotton candy childhood juxtaposed a funhouse disorienting future vs fate. The ethos is there though the meaning sentence to sentence a bit elusive in its grandiosness and crossing timelines. Circus cheers bleed into bloody asphalt that melds into wedding vows that seeps into a mother’s scold. It is quite fittingly dizzying, severelyo lacking in transitions. A religious background, a prim b!tch of a mother, yet keeps its flair with a surprising amount of peripheral violence and visceral pining.

Part 2 is full length prose like a regular book, in the POV of if she met her parents in college. Interestingly fully fleshed, not some corny Back To The Future or too colored by familial bias. This part ends in a sort of somber game show of destiny. Maybe the characters are too complimentary of her and perfect-looking, but I guess that is to endear them to us as she has been at a point.

Part 3: As usual, very dainty but urgent prose. A style not for everyone, perhaps overstimulating in a soft way. Despite the page count, not a quick read. Heady, high-brow, complicated (but not too much), just really sticks to whatever theme, like the sea, and explores every crevice.

Part 4 is slower still, making me miss the traditional poetry from part one for variety, what I thought this book would mostly be to begin with. Nonetheless, some of my favorite phrases are here like “eyes as swift as minnows,” or “sliding sticky legs into diner booth, sliding bare-bodied into bed.” The most interesting parts are about praying to her late grandpa for a cat, dissecting a squid (which I didn’t know is a thing), and road-tripping with her lover despite all the straight-up glares.

Part 5: Fitting the final section, lots of death-pondering.