Enjoy me among my ruins

by Juniper Fitzgerald

Combining sociological theory, fandom, and memoir, this experimental manifesto rejects dominant narratives about marginalized bodies.

Combining feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and personal memoir, Enjoy Me among My Ruins draws together a kaleidoscopic archive of Juniper Fitzgerald’s experiences as a queer sex-working mother. Plumbing the major events that shaped her life, and interspersing her childhood letters written to cult icon Gillian Anderson, this experimental manifesto contends with dominant narratives placed upon marginalized bodies and ultimately rejects a capitalist system that demands our purity and submission over our survival.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Feminism, Essays, Sex Work

128 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2022

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Queer academic, activist and former sex worker, Juniper Fitzgerald’s unorthodox blend of memoir and manifesto explicitly builds on the approach of writers like Maggie Nelson, particularly her ground-breaking The Argonauts. Like Nelson, Fitzgerald mingles memories, ideas around gender and power with elements of other texts, from Frankenstein to Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath; she also uses her teenage fandom for Gillian Anderson as an unusual form of portal to her own troubled past. I liked the audacity and ambition of Fitzgerald’s work, her rebelliousness recalls writing by women like Cookie Mueller. I agreed too, with much of her stance on trauma, heteronormativity and patriarchy, as well as supporting her views on the rights of sex workers, especially mothers. Her prose’s often striking, both visceral, and lyrical enough that sections border on prose poetry. But overall, this didn’t quite succeed for me, it felt too dispersed and choppy at times, nowhere near as sophisticated or considered as Nelson's work, making it difficult to negotiate and sometimes detracting from its coherence and force.

Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher The Feminist Press for an ARC 

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I am convinced that anyone can love anyone else with enough cocaine."

The year is 1993 and I am on the cusp of turning seven years old. At that point in my life, I was a horror and alien loving child with a wild imagination. Watching tv on that September day changed my life. Mulder and Scully made their official tv appearance on the X-Files and I was hooked. It brought forth my love of the weird and bizarre. Plus Mulder and Scully were smokin’.

Juniper’s fascination with Gillian (Dr. Dana Scully) and her letters written to her made me pick up this book. Anyone with a love for the characters and that show and writes about it is always going to sucker me in. Juniper also opens a door to sex work that has never been written about before. Those two combined made this an explosive read.

This book was really good. I love books that push the boundaries of taboo topics and authors who don’t try to sugarcoat situations to make them book worthy. Juniper lays everything out for the world to see and doesn’t shy away. She tells it like it is and doesn’t feel as if she has to hide.

Enjoy Me Among My Ruins was a great read. This lyrical experimentation was a deep look at the life of a sex worker, mother, and addict. It was an essential piece of literature and I really enjoyed it.

[Amber Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got an advanced copy and ... I loved it!

At long last, a sex worker authored memoir that breaks the fourth wall, not to educate the reader, but rather, to create intimacy with the reader. By page one, Juniper Fitzgerald already has you by the hand. Trust her to lead you through desert nights, early 2000s punk clubs, VIP rooms, childhood homes—and further, into a motley of emotion and memory.


Fitzgerald knows complexity—and so she employs a mixture of the epistolary form, braided lyrical essay, allusion, stream-of-consciousness and narrative storytelling. Enjoy Me Among My Ruins revels in both experiential wisdom and craft.

[Maja · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It’s like this: Henri Lefebvre was asked if he was an anarchist. He said, ‘I’m a Marxist, of course, so that one day we can all be anarchists.’ Likewise, I am pro-sex workers’ rights so that one day, no one will have to choose selling sex.”

[Amelia Sommer · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love a book i can read in the span of a morning. it’s always so special to be able to soak it all in in one sitting. note to self to read more books on sex work by sex workers. such a special read !!

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a spectacular memoir/poetry book. The format consisted of brief recollections of the author’s life, passages of praise to the women she’s known and letters to Gillian Anderson she wrote as a child. The structure of this book is surprising and thrilling. While the author’s life is fascinating alone, the way she organizes the story of her life tells us even more.

[Olivia Peltier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof. A very honest and at times hard to read memoir of sorts reflecting on abuse, trauma, sex work, motherhood, and feminism. Its time hopping, grounded by actual journal entries throughout Fitzgerald's youth, makes it different from a straight memoir and honestly, makes it even more devastating. Four stars only because the references to other literature are inserted in a very academic way that feels unnatural in this story.

[thea]

These things are absolutely insane to revisit. I can hardly do so without falling apart. Indeed, I am falling apart.

HOLY FUCK THIS BOOK HAS ME ILLITERATE

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sitting between 4-4.5. Some really fantastic writing and contemplating in here, and I did cry, so that's fun. I'd definitely recommend this (though please check content warnings).

[Margo 1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this short, fucked up, painfully honest book. I’ll need to reread it at least once before I can describe exactly why I like it so much, so for now, here are some passages that stuck with me:

“At twenty years old, in a secrecy that makes the reproach more cutting, I let my liquidy insides patter onto pink tiles. It doesn’t hurt at first. It never does…Nearly twenty years later, the spot on my skin is a constant reminder, a kind of prayer…This is what it is like to walk into a strip club: the cut of the spectacle is deep enough that initially the only thing you feel is the heat.”

“We all wipe the tears from our cheeks, cocooned together against the harsh realities of a society that despises us with such ferocity that even little children joke about our deaths: How many dead hookers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“She lives in a nineteenth-century brick building with a dumb waiter that reaches into the scary parts of the house. Her frozen placentas lie bagged in the kitchen…Her ex-husband is awarded sole custody of their children and she cannot mentally recover…I go to see her daughter perform poetry. Her daughter, onstage in the solitude of her mind, dressed in a pretty white summer dress, calls her mother a ‘transient hobo’ in front of an audience that snaps.”

“I would relive this life an infinite number of times just to be able to meet you again and again.”

“All of us toy with our family loom, weaving knots of rage into generational sorrow. Some of us hurt ourselves. Some of us hurt others. All of that heaviness has to go somewhere, after all.”

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received an advanced copy from Feminist Press in return for an honest review.

The cover is what got my attention, I am so glad it did, and I had a chance to receive an ARC.

Juniper tells her life story in a non-linear fashion and with literary references that she saw reflections of her experiences in which instantly told me as the reader what kind of person someone was or how she felt about herself. There is also feminist theory including parts about rights for sex workers, it's just all so well put together and impactful for such a short book.

[Sam Donovan]

short, gorgeous prose, impactful yet lacking...i needed this to be another 100 pages with slightly dumbed down language (but at least i learned a bunch of new words!) because this author is clearly smarter than me and i struggled with some sections. i really wanted to know more about this author's life and why they wrote this memoir. i highly recommend if you're interested in the subject matter.

[Andria Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It starts with a quote by Dana Scully, and I feel I'm going to love this, but oof, the triggers in the book. Y'all are going to need tissues. I had to stop at the brutal death of a cat.

TW: sexual assault, rape, child abuse, language, graphic scenes, death of a beloved cat

[Yumeng Wang]

hm.

beautiful language ("moon-wet"), but perhaps I am too dense & uncultured to understand this book.

what was it about?
what were the arguments?
who is Gillian Anderson?

[Drea · Rating 5 out of 5]

5👏🏻stars👏🏻

Rtc

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

You are 13 years old in 1990s Omaha, a “half-frozen muddied pool filled to the brim with grief,” addressing your diary entries to super-crush Gillian Anderson and trying to avoid the advances of your friend’s handsy father and his ilk. You are 22 at midnight in a motel room in Iowa, alone with your cigarettes, used condoms, trusty journal, and the five hundred-dollar bills that make you, triumphantly, “officially a hooker.” You are a hundred pounds heavier than when you started sex work and have earned a PhD and an adjunct professorship, but you still end up stealing groceries just to keep yourself and your child fed. Is this you? Is it someone you love? Is it the case that “only once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time will you have grown enough to be born”? If you glimpse a reflection of the familiar, if there was ever a time that “having sex with anonymous people on dial-up AOL internet” was how you conceptualized freedom, if your to-read shelf admits an aperture between Maggie Nelson and Carmen Maria Machado, fill it with the slim, experimental memoir Enjoy Me Among My Ruins by Midwestern mother, sex worker and academic Juniper Fitzgerald. In a hundred zippy pages, Fitzgerald takes us on a microscopic view of the “brain-severed body” through the lens of truth, asking how our stories and our truths match and how they differ. Is the truth true by default and forever, or does it demand constant revision? Is it ephemeral, porous, neither or both? Is it true, at times, that you are a monster or that life itself is monstrous? If you have ever felt this way—and most of us have—heed Fitzgerald’s revelation that linguistically and historically monsters are “messengers and heralds of the extraordinary.” In a world that can surround us with poison, she shows that it is our “monsters” whom we often find shouldering the heaviest burdens, “helping one another navigate fields of hemlock under a harvest moon” and challenging us to “live long enough to be born.”

[Glassworks Magazine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Amanda Smera on www.rowanglassworks.org.

As with any book review, I know I have an obligation to remain professional in the following paragraphs. But Juniper Fitzgerald forces me to be personal in every letter that bleeds through the choreographed motion of my fingertips on this keyboard. I almost want to conduct this as an open letter to Juniper, a “thank you” note that wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as I hope it could be. But that wouldn’t be fair to Fitzgerald or her story, or to the stories of Jean, and Cassandra, and her Grandma, and Theresa, and Diana, and Marita, and Anita, and Dakota, and Andi, and Jennifer.

Fitzgerald is a mother, former sex worker, and academic based in the Midwest. Her essay collection is a perfectly composed mosaic of her life, with stories that at times were hard to read. And it’s because they are hard that they must be read. The first thing a reader will notice upon opening Enjoy me Among my Ruins is the fact that every single detail is meticulously thought out. The structure that dictates the pace of this collection is genius, described in her author’s note as a “nonlinear, kaleidoscopic structure.” Fitzgerald’s story is told hybridly, with letters/profiles about the women in her life, followed by excerpts of her very private confessions to Gillian Anderson—which is the name of her childhood diary—and deeply personal braided essays.

There are a lot of triggering subjects in her pages; the rawness Fitzgerald uses to walk the reader through her essays is truly a sensory experience, and I found myself flinching reading through some of her descriptions. In the second essay of the book, “Dead Bugs,” Fitzgerald writes about her past Humbert Humberts (a reference to Lolita’s abuser): “We have sex in an abandoned house and then, later, we find a cheap apartment with stained carpets off the interstate. My Humbert Humbert gives me little things. Pills. Cigarettes. Money. He [f@#$%] me with an empty wine bottle just to see” (20).

Her life as a sex-worker is deeply explored within these pages. As a reader, and someone who didn’t really know a whole lot about this topic, besides the widely romanticized Hollywood classic Pretty Woman (1990), I chose to face these parts of the books as an opportunity to be educated on this subject. And she so brilliantly walked me through this reality; her in depth, metaphorical, amazing descriptions, told me everything I needed to know: “This is what it is like to walk into a strip club: the cut of the spectacle is deep enough that initially the only thing you feel is the heat. If you can handle the dagger of it, the way it plunges through flesh and bone, there are scars and prayers to be had too” (4).

The essays about motherhood and the stigma of mothering a child, while also working in the industry, were some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered. The emotions, and the conversation she’s sparkling come alive more urgently on the page.

There’s so much to be learned about this topic; from a craft perspective, Fitzgerald does an amazing job articulating her circumstances to readers through scenes that effectively portray her struggles. In the essay “Fleur-di-lezzie,” she includes some direct dialogue among other sex-workers about their relationship with motherhood and their career (another craft technique I found extremely effective to the narrative), sharing some atrocious misconceptions and deeply rooted prejudices embedded in the conjunction of the two roles. Fitzgerald points out:

“When the wife-and-mother class is also the whore class, patriarchal domination is so threatened, so ultimately blanched and blinded by its own precarious ideology, that it digs its claws in deeper, threatening not only the safety of sex workers but of our children as well. [..] And so those of us who occupy these two classes simultaneously, those of us who must mourn the stigma and violence against sex workers on a daily basis, will continue to push back with images of lilies, of the fleur-de-lis, reclaimed and reimagined as both Madonna and whore” (27).

Also on the topic of motherhood, Fitzgerald’s essay “Dear [Redacted]” is the one that truly brought me to tears. She made the stylistic choice of writing this essay (perhaps the most personal piece in the collection) in the form of a letter to her daughter. There is abuse and betrayal in her story, along with so much sadness, so much erasure, so much exclusion. This essay presents a different side of the author’s story, one that shows how even when among her ruins, the love for her daughter rises above everything else:

“I love you. And I always have. I loved you before the creation of the universe and I will love you after it is gone. I would relive this life an infinite number of times just to be able to meet you again and again. And if you think that’s melodramatic in any way, then good—you’re clearly more adjusted than I am” (40).

I found myself being extremely careful reading this collection – not in the sense of being aware of the triggering subjects, but paying very close attention. A lot of nonfiction writers—myself included—often write to express something they think needs to be heard and, consequently, cared about. When reading a personal narrative like Fitzgerald’s, I try not only to listen, but also to cherish every single word. I left these pages knowing so much more about a reality that isn’t my own—but, in some ways, it is. It is all of our stories, and perhaps that’s why it hurts so much. If you’ve ever found yourself needing a Gillian, or facing abuse, or living as a solo mother, or dancing on a pole in front of an audience of pigs, you’ll learn something about yourself in these pages. This book is about surviving as a human, and Dear Juniper, I thank you for that.

[maisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juniper Firzgerald’s writing is visceral and pungent as she shares her experiences as a queer, sex-working mother. I devoured her writing and was fascinated by the intersections of her identity. I also love the way in which she weaves literary analysis and critical theories into her memoir. It felt comprehensive and vulnerably bold, despite its length! I had a blast annotating as I read, Juniper’s words forcing me to reflect in real time. I think this narrative really stands as a piece of advocacy in the pro-sex work movement and touches on an aspect of feminism with an honest approach. Solid read.

[Rachel Nevada Wood]

Queer sex worker Juniper Fitzgerald writes a narrative collage that is about sex work, mothering, and her past relationships.

It is clear (both in the introduction and in the style of the book) that Enjoy Me Among My Ruins is inspired by Maggie Nelson. Fitzgerald adopts a narrative collage style, hopping frequently between topics, timelines, and moods. Ostensibly, the book is split into 10 sections. Each section opens with a woman Fitzgerald cares dearly for, is followed by a letter from her childhood diary, and then opens into a large thematic chapter.

I wanted to like this book so badly. I absolutely adore Maggie Nelson and I was in the mood for a punchy, reflective memoir. But Enjoy Me Among My Ruins just felt very loose. Fitzgerald notes in the beginning that the book will hop around timelines. I don't mind that at all, but I wish the time jumps were signaled a little better. I often felt disoriented or confused about where we were at in her life which I think lessened the impact of the book, especially thematically. Additionally, I felt like there weren't as many clear, underlying threads as I would have liked. Rarely does Fitzgerald ruminate and I wanted more of that! Some of the thematic chapters get closer to that than others, but even the thematic chapters appear to lose their threads towards the end.

A heavier editing hand might have fixed these issues, but as it stands, Enjoy Me Among My Ruins feels like it could use some tightening, sign posting, and a greater narrative force moving the book forward.

[Kato]

ik vond het verontrustend moeilijk om mee te voelen met miss author
soms voelde het in some way of ze haar eigen standpunt tegenwerkte?
maar misschien ben ik deel van de kortzichtige bevooroordeelde groep waar ze zich tegen wil verdedigen
ik heb echt geprobeerd mezelf te catchen daarop
en hier en daar zijn mooie stukken he waarin ze een beeld schetst van hoe die vooroordelen eruit zien enzo
maar elke keer worden die mooie stukken dan weer onderbroken door "once when me and my ex lover were soooo high on meth together..." en dan denk ik ja maar zie ik spoken of ben je ook gwn super onstabiel?? dus dan ja is het voor mij niet meer een weerlegging van de feiten am i making sense
maar nogmaals mss ben ik gwn zelf rottenly stuck in the misogynistic trenches??? hoop het niet.
anyway ik denk dat ik ook gwn mss niet zo'n fan ben van de extreme , ongecensureerde en shockfactor(?) schrijfstijl. voelt soms zo ..... mss beter een dagboek? weet het niet. of alsof je zelf nog externe bevestiging aan het zoeken bent voor waar je doorheen bent gegaan. wat aight is maar ja ik lees dat liever niet denk ik.
anyway in ieder geval veel thoughts , beter veel slechte thoughts dan geen enkele at all!
groetjes

[Davis Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really cool and unique book. This author has an insane life and she does a great job interspersing childhood letters to her TV crush with events or people in her life that impacted her. Her insight on sex work was suuuuper cool and I really enjoyed reading her first hand accounts. She also is very knowledgeable on feminist/leftist theory and pop culture, which adds some interesting stuff to read.

She says the book is very dream like in the intro, but I wouldn’t call it that, just tales you’d probably hear from her if you were having a long chat. I’m not too sure if her letters in the past were actually real, or if they were edited or fixed up for the book, but that thought sometimes took me out of it. But overall this was a nice, quick read about a very highly educated woman reflecting on her very memorable life.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haphazardly and poetically written, Enjoy Me Among My Ruins is a memoir of an innocent turned survivor turned sex worker turned mother. Juniper Fitzgerald pulls together an archive of her life through teenager musings to Gillian Anderson, literary references of masterminds such as Mary Shelley, Maggie Nelson, and Rachel Cusk, and stories of finding touches of home in other sex workers she meets along the way.

I thought this memoir was extremely well written. It was short and sweet, yet impactful where it was needed. Even though it’s Fitzgerald’s story, I felt like I really knew the women she introduced throughout her storytelling. I’m still reeling from the letter she included to her child, a yearning of wanting to be better yet the truth of who she unabashedly is spelled out so clearly there.

I received an early copy from The Feminist Press in return for my honest review.

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A queer, sex-working mother reflects on her history of abuse by men, the support she’s received from women she’s loved, and the safety & security which she desires for her child.
A sparse memoir, and I think a little underdeveloped in places. it felt limited by the brevity, particularly compared to what the blurb promised. (for example, I imagine anyone picking it up for exploration of x-files fandom would be sorely disappointed)
But I also understand the style when considering all the difficult things that were covered by its contents. her interspersed childhood diary entries were especially impactful. They were strikingly juxtaposed beside the reflections on her child’s life.

gifted to me by feminist press!

[Hilm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Juniper Fitzgerald‘s profile is very interesting. She has a PhD in sociology, but also a mother and a sex worker. She doesn’t write much on her degree, other than in glimpses.

P69
It’s decidedly not my fault or the fault of any sex worker that sometimes our survival depends on the transformations of men into pigs.
“Do …do you really have a PhD?” my piggy stutters.
“Yes,” I coo, and roll my eyes. “I really do hold a doctorate.”
What I don’t say is that academia necessitates my erotic labor too. What I don’t say is that as an evergreen adjunct, my heady labor is far more precarious than the wars of my body. What I don’t say is that there will always be far more men looking to be licked with a feminist text than students reeling to read it.
“Wha… what’s our lesson today, Mistress?”

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I received an e-galley of this title from Edelweiss.

I was familiar with Fitzgerald from Twitter, so when I saw she had written a nonfiction title billed as a mix forms and subjects, I was immediately interested. Some of my favorite reads from the past year (A Ghost in the Throat and Everybody) fell under this category. I did enjoy this title, and found her writing to be very beautiful. I rated it 3.5 because it felt like it could have been better if it were longer. I was starting to get the feel and understand the structure and rhythm of the book when it suddenly ended. I will keep an eye out for more of her titles in the future.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoy me among my ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald is an experimental narrative, blending “feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and personal memoir.” The book is beautiful and confronting. As a sex worker and author, Fitzgerald is able to share her personal experience with a sense of poetic depth, offering a compassionate perspective of what it’s like to struggle and fight for a place in the world and what it’s like to be a mother when society harshly judges you for the work you do. The author’s love for her daughter and the friends who make up her family is so clear. This feels like an important book, even if it’s sometimes and uncomfortable one. (CW: sexual assault, child abuse.)

[Camille]

i have a hard time deciding what to rate this so i wont :) i think the disjointedness really worked for me here (i know i said i THOUGHT i didn’t like it when stories did that in past reviews but now i kind of fw it) and achieved the dreamlike feeling she was trying to achieve.

the writer’s voice in this is something i’m objectively not a fan of but because of how raw and personal the subject matter is it didn’t really matter. super gut-wrenching stuff. a perspective on and of sex workers i’ve never really seen discussed in this way before.

loved the letter to her daughter.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slender volume packs a wallop. Just the mere facts of Juniper's life, told simply, made my jaw drop. I picked it because I loved the title and it is a quick read, but some of it is quite devastating. I watched her ted talk which was also excellent, and found more of her writing online which I also enjoyed. NOT for the faint of heart or people who like to stick their head in the sand about how difficult life can be, especially for those in fragile economic situations, which is a lot of people.

[xyZeereads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5🌟

Stoic, unapologetic, astute. This very short but monumental creative non-fiction isn't for everyone. I personally enjoyed reading through the slivers of the author's thought-provoking, albeit painful, life. The author's lifelong obsession with Gillian Anderson (hope she'll get to meet her one day as a result of this book!) and her comparison between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein monster and her own trauma are a couple of highlights for me.

[Kathryn Goodspeed · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

This was heartbreaking and messed up. The haphazard and lyrical writing style captured so many complex emotions and discussed topics surrounding sex work that, even after studying women’s studies in college, I have never encountered. I would not call this a masterpiece but I do hope it makes its way into more classes to begin discussions about sex work and the way some women are treated and discarded because of their lived experiences.