Present Imperfect

by Ona Gritz

This debut essay collection by Ona Gritz, NY Times-published writer and longtime columnist for Literary Mama, reads like a blockbuster movie. There is a heroine with cerebral palsy, likeable and indefatigable. There is family conflict, romance, and true crime. Ona writes on disability, family dynamics, and the murder of her sister's family with candor and passion. A critically acclaimed essayist, two Notable mentions by Robert Atwan in The Best American Essays, a Best Life Story in Salon, among the recent accolades, Ms. Gritz has gathered the best of her work from the NY Times Disability series, The Rumpus, Brevity, and more for this fine and most riveting read.

74 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 15, 2021

About the author

Ona Gritz writes memoir, essays, and poetry for adults, verse novels for teens, and fiction for children. Her memoir, Everywhere I Look, will be released on April 16th from Apprentice House Press of Loyola University.

Ona’s nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Utne Reader, Brevity, Parents, The Rumpus, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays and A Best Life Story in Salon.

Ona’s poetry collection Geode was a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems can be found in Ploughshares, The Bellevue Literary Review, One Art, Catamaran Literary Reader, Stone Gathering, SWWIM, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. In 2020, she won The Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project.

Ona’s 2023 novel for children, August Or Forever, was a Reader’s Choice and Wishing Shelf finalist in middle grade fiction. The Space You Left Behind, her first young adult novel, written in verse, is forthcoming from West 44 Books in June 2024.

Reviews

[Eileen Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book of short essays linked by themes of disability, marriage, parenting, and a terrible violent crime. Many of the essays have been previously published in literary journals. I first read Ona Gritz' micro essay, “Here, Look,” accompanied by the image on the cover, in River Teeth’s weekly online "Beautiful Things." It was one of my favorites, so I was very excited to get a copy of this collection.

[Carol Wierzbicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading Ona Gritz's Present Imperfect, I didn't know that the condition of Cerebral Palsy can "bisect" the body, effectively making one side partially functional or not functional at all. In this work, related mostly in diaristic, brief chapters, Gritz explores multiple physical and emotional challenges encountered throughout her life, ones that often seem to be more than one person can handle.

If you are of a certain age (Boomer, like me), you can identify with Gritz's rites of passage, from the school dance to the first time getting stoned in college to listening to The Monkees with her sister.

Other experiences are more specific to her: two marriages (the second to a partner with a different disability), coping with her own physical limitations while raising her son, and the harrowing experience of losing her sister to a murder.

With her steady, poetic voice and subdued tone, Gritz deftly balances moments of lightness and joy with personal tragedy. The shift from first-person to the "you" voice in the chapter covering her sister's murder (along with the murder of the sister's husband and baby) is at first a bit jarring, but it's appropriate for the content.

Through the 2016 election and the onset of Covid, Gritz explores her own flaws and foibles, even as she calls out "haters" and "trolls." Again, poetic introspection at work.

I've read some literature dealing with disability in years past, was a caregiver to someone close to me with a chronic illness, and published an anthology of friends' writing dealing with similar challenges (Stories from the Infirmary, now out of print). Gritz's frank collection of essays is a welcome addition to these, and a teaching moment for anyone wanting to know more about how disability affects daily life.

As she says toward the end of one of her chapters, “Maybe it’s not about the body and its limits. Maybe it’s a destination, everyone hobbling there as best we can.”

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unable to sleep I started reading Present Perfect, Ona Gritz's wonderful essay collection around 3am, and now, sixteen hours later I've finished it. I did manage around 4-5 hours of restless sleep (nothing unusual). There was something magical (a sentence, a thought, a paragraph, an entire essay), on every page. And for me, a disabled writer, who for years tried denying my disabilities, my obvious otherness, and not writing about them, this was a book I could relate to.

"EVEN. WHOLE. Maybe it's not about the body and its limits. Maybe it's a destination, everyone hobbling there as best we can." from the opening essay A Body Divided.

"But while rage may fuel us, it in no way nourishes us. Compassion does that, as does community, as does sharing our stories." from Troll Pox.

"Is the prospect of living in a body like mine scarier to him than entering a burning house? Am I the burning house?" from Am I the Burning House?

These essays are full of everything a writer needs: trials & tribulations, compassion & doubt, love, desire, humor, and forgiveness, as well us terrible grief as in "It's Time" about Gritz's relationship with her older sister and the aftermath of her sister's murder. In this powerful essay Gritz switches to the 2nd person. It's a brilliant move.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming prose. A series of personal essays written by a poet who sees kindness "as a crucial act of forgiveness" - an idea rendered necessary by living through four years of that "bombastic hater" of a president we were stuck with.