Hall of Waters

by Berry Grass

HALL OF WATERS is an attempt to demythologize the rural American Midwest through the specific example of the author’s hometown, Excelsior Springs, MO. Through lyric essay & memoir, the book seeks to examine & undercut the inherent settler white supremacy of the Midwestern small-town, to deromanticize the nostalgia for land & place that is the hallmark of Midwestern art, & to think about what it was like growing up queer & trans in such a toxic environment.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2019

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review from 2020 when I first read it still stands: The amount of times I involuntarily said "fuuck" outloud while reading this book is too numerous to keep count. Gorgeously written, it is an intense and deeply researched survey into the Midwest, colonization and abuse. through the authors own experience growing up in Missouri and pieces written to a deceased sculptor who hailed from the same hometown we are left with a picture of Excelsior Springs that is rich and detailed. I cannot say enough about how incredible this book is

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I seek out books because I selfishly want to relate; I want to read about the places where I’ve lived and the places that surround me. I wanted to read Hall of Waters because I wanted to read about the queer experience of growing up in Missouri, and how that might look like myself or my friends, and maybe I could learn more about this state where we live, misery. I read this book on an airplane coming to and from Missouri into the western states, into the desert, where I was going on vacation. I was so unused to the dryness of the heat in California, since in Missouri, we are always drowning in humidity. I felt ill against the sandy heaps and mountains. I put the book down now as the Missouri government has ruled against almost all trans-affirming healthcare, one reason why artists like Camellia-Berry Grass don’t live here anymore and can’t.

Camellia-Berry Grass is an experimental-nonfiction writer and editor who writes in fragmented pieces, taking research and her own life and dissecting it with poetic reflection. This slim lyrical memoir is about being from Excelsior Springs, a town that used to untruthfully boast its natural spring water cured many ailments to desperate tourists searching for health. Grass interrogates these lies and the colonialist white supremacist ideals that falsely hang over the town’s history and the history of the midwest in general, which was truly “the product of black labor and black intellect.” The ingredients of this book include: the history of downtown Excelsior Springs buildings alongside the history of her dad’s abuse, describing the memories of her childhood home and grandparents’ home disguised inside the clerical documents of architectural inventory forms, and most in-depth, an interrogation of the work of contemporary American sculptor Donald Judd, who is from Excelsior Springs, too. It’s fascinating to read Grass’s analysis of Judd’s life events and lifelong creation of minimalist sculptures, like stacked bricks of color; how a sculpture can relate to one’s rural town that keeps its dirt underneath.

Does Missouri want to know the truth? Will certain kinds of minerals in the water ever save us from our bodies? “The Midwest is best defined as a museum exhibit.” Any book about the Midwest will always be a book about America’s failings to me, the heart of it. As nonfiction writers from here, it’s our duty to dig up this truth and show it.

[Ryan Bollenbach]

A formally inventive and gripping collection of short lyric essays concerning history--the personal and political--of Grass's home town of Excelsior. From essays as 2nd person ekphrastic pieces about and to the artist Donald Judd, to essays documenting the history of the Excelsior spring water, to essays as state Architectural/Historical inventory forms about Grass's home, these essays ask the difficult questions of identity, violence, and colonialism through the halls of the history of people and space.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this hybrid work, an exploration of the writer's birth city of Excelsior Springs, some memoir, and some letters written to Donald Judd about what the writer sees in his art. It's striking and fun a weird, but it's also incredibly effective in ways I didn't expect. Like, the way the book talks about white supremacy is really compelling and well-put, in a book that seems like so many things are more important to it. The "hermit crab" essays, written in the boxes of a form to have the writer's home and grandparents' home declared historic landmarks are also standouts.

A quick read, but very rewarding.

[Tyler Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t figure out how to talk about how good this book is. It feel truly singular in its form and subject matter. The kind of book only one person could write, that person being Berry Grass. FFO: prose written like its poetry; hometown ethnographies; modern and minimalist art; trans stories; critique of whiteness; formal experiments; good good good writing.

“jug of sun”

“Gender is agrarian—seeds planted, harvested. We cultivate it. The only real gender binary is you either come into yours fast or slow.”

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

#TransRightsReadathon 2023. Thoughts on Medium (unpaywalled link)

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing researched poetic memoir of place (Excelsior Springs, Missouri), gender, and whiteness in conversation with the work of Donald Judd, who grew up there several decades before Grass did.

[Luke Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better on a reread

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. History, memory, excavation, conversation.

[Ellarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone from the area of Excelsior this is fuckin fire

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of this size is deceptive--you think it's going to be a consideration of the author's home town of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, and the "medicinal" waters that drove the town's economy for a long time, but it ends up being that and much more. The waters were expected to transform those who soaked in or imbibed it, and Grass is deeply invested in the questions of transformation and what's beneath the surface. Their conversations with Excelsior Springs's other artist, Donald Judd, provide a framework for the memoir- and history-based elements of the book (kind of like Judd's own boxes, which seem empty but contain multitudes). It's a great book, and it deserves to be read, discussed, and taught widely.

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully haunting portrayal of the legacies of racism, colonialism, transphobia, and the concept of home told in the form of a poetic memoir.