Intimate: An American Family Photo Album

by Paisley Rekdal

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Asian American Studies. Native American Studies. INTIMATE is a hybrid memoir and "photo album" that blends personal essay, historical documentary, and poetry to examine the tense relationship between self, society, and familial legacy in contemporary America. Typographically innovative, INTIMATE creates parallel streams, narrating the stories of Rekdal's Norwegian-American father and his mixed-race marriage, the photographer Edward S. Curtis, and Curtis's murdered Apsaroke guide, Alexander Upshaw. The result is panoramic, a completely original literary encounter with intimacy, identity, family relations, and race.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Memoir, Art, Essays, Photography

300 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2012

About the author

Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections A Crash of Rhinos (2000), Six Girls Without Pants (2002), and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (2007) as well as the book of essays The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In (2000).

In reviewing The Invention of the Kaleidoscope for Barn Owl Review, Jay Robinson observed that it’s “the razor’s edge that always accompanies eros that makes the poems of Paisley Rekdal fresh, intense and ultimately irresistible.” Rekdal’s work grapples with issues of race, sexuality, myth, and identity while often referencing contemporary culture.

Rekdal has been honored with a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship to South Korea. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006) and the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Rekdal teaches at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[Sam K · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

I really liked this one. There are three different stories and characters we follow and I like how they’re so different. I also like the interweaving of the poetry and the photographs, it does an effective job at immersing me in the story. I will say that I wish there was a bit more time spent on the dubious morality on the pictures taken of the Native Americans, but I did appreciate how the focus was mostly on identity and the intimacy (pun intended) of the photographs and the circumstances concerning the photographs and of the author’s life, too.

That’s all I have to say on this one. I procrastinated reading this for class so I read it in 4 and a half hours straight 😀 but I still managed to enjoy this book.

[Dao Strom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in one day, captivated by its form, its daring, its reaching, its beautiful writing and images... The author uses the photos of Edward S. Curtis, and imagines the biography of Curtis's Native guide Upshaw, while interweaving glimpses into her own mixed-race background - a Norwegian-American father, a Chinese-American mother. There are motifs of boundaries blurred and crossed, the personages in this "story" all caught in undefined spaces where two worlds (brown and white, we might state it as) meet, and there are motifs of death - the dying culture Curtis is attempting to preserve, even controversially, the mother in the hospital with cancer, father and daughter at her bedside... Lovely, subtle, intricate entwining of themes and threads across time and cultures. This book is the type of memoir I wish I could construct for my own similarly confluent Viet-Danish-American family background, one that obliquely, complexly, yet so aptly captures the confluence and ambiguity of what "identity" and representation mean in a mixed-America. The photos by Curtis the author appears to have mixed feelings about - keenly criticizing the photographer for certain controversies about his work, his intent, and yet admitting how seductive the photos are. Over a hundred years later we are still looking at those photographs, talking about the photographer's work, even though we know them to be perhaps not "authentic" documents of their time, and even though by the end of his days his ambitious project was considered (by many) to have "failed." This book presents Curtis, largely through the eyes of his guide Upshaw, but it also through this narrative veil subversively presents the author's own mixed-race self as a question - a "picture" of sorts - of what it entails to make the passage between two realms. A really refreshing re-configuring of literary expectations for narrative and multicultural memoir.

[Ken Titt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although what Paisley Rekdal has written here is brilliant, it's what she hasn't written in this book that is truly amazing. Her words take you to the edge of what she sees, then her poignant allusions paint the picture as if captured by Curtis himself.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh god, this book is amazing! creative nonfiction fans rejoice! one of the best reads of 2012

[Mark Chesnut · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading tons of memoirs as I work on my own (which will be published in 2022) and this one caught my eye because of the visual elements, as well as the multiple story lines that combine the story of the author with that of photographer Edward S. Curtis, who was famous for his photographs of indigenous people in the United States. The book is structured very differently than most and so rather than a fluid, start-to-finish read, it's more like a series of entries that can be digested on their own or all together. A very interesting read with equally interesting photographs.

[Oscar Lilley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rekdal is a beautiful writer. She has interwoven her own family journey with that of an early photographer and his guide, a Crow. The images really seep into your mind and stick with you. The major problem I had with the book is how much the author projected herself into the fictionalized biography. I just thought it went too far when you consider that these were real people with real relationships.

[Mills College Library]

818.54 R381i 2011

[Brittni Kingsteck · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book was a little difficult to follow, but it was very interesting and an important lesson in American history

[Shin Yu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Rekdal's first book "The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee" a more successful memoir then this collection which weaves together multiple story lines in a hybrid project that encompasses archival fotos, poems, and short prose vignettes. I was not able to focus on any aspect of the multiple narratives at work and felt that the collage approach worked against her in this collection. The book is loosely connected by a collection of Edward Curtis images and a book that her father has been reading which is also part of the author's own research.

[Courtney]

Fragmented in the most lyrical, perfect way. Currently writing a book review on this for NewPages.com

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is fabulous! I've never read anything like it. Rekdal is actually a professor at my school. Just sayin.

[Donald Quist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

[Theresia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, in a good way. I like this weird. This weird can stay.