This Is About Incest

by Margaret Randall

Words and photographic images are the tools the author uses as she works her way through memories of sexual assault.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 1987

About the author

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. She has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. Shorter stays in Peru and North Vietnam were also formative. In the turbulent 1960s she co-founded and co-edited EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN, a bilingual literary journal which for eight years published some of the most dynamic and meaningful writing of an era. From 1984 through 1994 she taught at a number of U.S. universities.

Margaret was privileged to live among New York’s abstract expressionists in the 1950s and early ’60s, participate in the Mexican student movement of 1968, share important years of the Cuban revolution (1969-1980), the first four years of Nicaragua’s Sandinista project (1980-1984), and visit North Vietnam during the heroic last months of the U.S. American war in that country (1974). Her four children—Gregory, Sarah, Ximena and Ana—have given her ten grandchildren: Lia, Martin, Daniel, Richi, Sebastian, Juan, Luis Rodrigo, Mariana, Eli, and Tolo. She has lived with her life companion, the painter and teacher Barbara Byers, for almost a quarter century.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like I was sat in a room speaking, incredibly candidly, with Randall. It is not an easy read in the least, but It is incredibly meaningful, and incredibly important.

Randall lays herself bare in what seems to be a piece of art as well as a book, as it contains photography and poems that are as significant to the piece as the prose itself.

The subject matter is hard to handle at points, but Randall writes incredibly well, and from a place of deep emotion and experience. I would be remiss not to recommend this book.

[Margaux Tatin Blanc]

I had not seen / read that book since 1987 when i read it at a friend's house... and I thought at the time that this was about incest, this was about her... but does it matter that it is about her? when so many children experience this... the worse betrayal as it comes from the inside, from the family supposed to protect you...
I came across the book again as i was reading MY LIFE IN 100 OBJECTS
same writer but 37 years before...
She was a grandfather's object to torture and rape and now she talks about taking her grandsons to the Museum of Natural History....
But in 1987 she wrote short texts and poems about her past, and in 2020 she writes 100 short texts and pictures about her moment on earth...
Is it the same, is it different?
Is she writing herself out of the suffering through snippets of feelings?

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

WTF?!? Worth flipping through if you get the chance. It's a surreal piece of art-as-therapy. Perhaps it was very helpful for the author to make, maybe it would even be helpful to other people who have suffered similar abuse, but honestly I didn't get much out of it but a few chuckles.