Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home

by Jessica E. Johnson

A memoir of Johnson’s unusual upbringing during the 1970s and ’80s, interwoven with the story of her transition to parenthood in post-recession Portland, Oregon.



In the weeks after her first child is born, Jessica E. Johnson receives an email from her mother that contains artifacts of the author’s early scans of Polaroids and letters her mother wrote in mountain west mining camps and ghost towns—places without running water, companions, or help. Awash in love and restlessness, Johnson begins to see how the bedrock images of her isolated upbringing have stayed with her, even when she believed she was removing herself from their logic.



As she copes with the swirling pressures of parenting, teaching at an urban community college, and a partnership shaped by chronic illness, Johnson starts digging through her mother’s keepsakes and the histories of the places her family passed through, uncovering the linked misogyny and disconnection that characterized her childhood world—a world with uncomfortable echoes in the present and even in the act of writing itself. The resulting journey encompasses Johnson’s early memories, the story of the earth told in the language of geology, bits of vivid correspondence, a mothering manual from the early twentieth century, and the daily challenges of personal and collective care in a lonesome-crowded Pacific wonderland. Mettlework traces intergenerational failures of homemaking, traveling toward presence and relationship amid the remains of extractive industry and unsustainable notions of family.

184 pages, Paperback

Published May 16, 2024

About the author

Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry, nonfiction, and things in between. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, River Teeth, Poetry Northwest, Tin House, DIAGRAM, Four Way Review, The New Republic, Sixth Finch, and Dream Pop, among others. She is an Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient and an Oregon Book Award Finalist for her chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other (New Michigan Press). Her first full-length collection, Metabolics, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2023. She lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland Community College.

Reviews

[Erin Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poet Jessica E. Johnson’s Mettlework is an intricate, deeply thoughtful memoir that hinges on her isolated upbringing and interrogation of her parents’ roles as they chase an idyllic vision of freedom. When Johnson’s first child is born, her mother gives her letters she wrote from mining camps where they lived in Johnson’s first years, and these letters open an exploration of motherhood, gender, acquisition, and inequality-- and what it takes, and means, to make a home. My copy of this book is dog-eared and underlined, falling open and well-loved.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This was a lovely book. I enjoyed reading about how the author grew up in a series of very remote locations, chasing mining jobs for the author's father while her mother stayed home with their children and tried to make a home for them through the art of homemaking. Through her mother's letters from that time, she found a different connection with her that helped her understand her mother in a different light than she had growing up. It put her challenges in raising a family in perspective.

[Theresa Carroll Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a compelling and interesting read about being raised in various mining camps, the author’s experiences becoming a mother herself and how she reconciled what “home making” is. This resonated with me as a daughter, a mom, and a spouse who has made many relocations due to my husband’s career.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proof in a memoir that it's not either/or, but both/and. I love this book, I held it close to my chest when I finished it.