A series of vividly rendered personal narratives, Trespasses recounts the coming of age of three generations in the rural Great Plains. In examining how class, race, and gender play out in the lives of two farm families who simultaneously love and hate the place they can鈥檛 escape, Lacy Johnson presents rural whiteness as an ethnicity worthy of study. As she dismantles the complex history of a forgotten place while fighting to keep its people whole, Johnson reflects on a place that outsiders can cross into or pass through, but may never fully know. From formal and informal research methods, Johnson has produced an innovative collection of prose poems and essays that together create an exciting work of contemporary nonfiction.
Examining region through the lenses of memory (experience), history (memory made public), and theory (experience abstracted), Trespasses is a deeply intelligent work, at the center of which is the author, always feeling as if she doesn鈥檛 belong but not sure where else she should be. In this profound work, Johnson drifts gracefully back and forth between timelines and voices in a way that illustrates how her present is connected to the many pasts she chronicles.
鈥淯tterly hip, while at the same time a voice from another era, Trespasses is about 鈥榞rowing up in a poor farming town in the Great Plains,鈥 an examination of the term 鈥榳hite trash鈥 through interviews, research, and memory, and an evocation of a place many of us will never see. Yet, at its heart, it is a lyric evocation of self. Plainspoken, tattooed, and brilliant, Lacy Johnson pushes the boundaries of what memoir鈥攁nd, perhaps more importantly, what any of us鈥攃an be.鈥濃擭ick Flynn
鈥淚 was riveted by Trespasses鈥攚ritten with the haunting interiority of poetry and the compelling drive of prose. Much like being caught in a novel by Faulkner or Morrison, I found myself thinking about large important issues without initially understanding how Lacy Johnson鈥檚 language carried me there.鈥濃擟laudia Rankine
鈥淭he middle of nowhere for some is her home in rural Missouri for Lacy Johnson, and it鈥檚 a place she loves but where she cannot stay. That trouble of her heart is beautifully mapped in the quiet, beguiling Trespasses. Writing in a multiplicity of voices that surprise but also ring true, Johnson digs into the notions of 鈥榟ome鈥 with a clear-eyed reverence for family and the emblems of Middle America: silo and sparrow nest, shotgun and sewing table.鈥濃擱yan Van Meter, author, If You Knew Then What I Know Now
鈥淎 haircut. A breakfast. A ride to school. An adolescent transgression. In Trespasses, Lacy M. Johnson etches indelibly the texture of a life that is lovely, horrifying, and hallowed. Her writing is a marvel: a microsectioning of the simplest memory, a peeling and lifting of each layer to reveal new truths that the reader keeps recognizing. Focusing on being defined by class, Johnson simultaneously transcends it and presents us a primer on how to see as humans.鈥濃擬elissa J. Delbridge, author, Family Bible
a slur
that no one ever says out loud. Not to me anyway. Instead: one of those. One of ours with one of them. They can鈥檛 believe it. Degenerate, they mean. Filthy. Poor. Disrespectful. Which describes no one I know. The girl in my English class wears her hair in tight, neat braids, raises her hand and always gives the right answer. Such supine poverty exists there. Her skin is smooth and smells like lavender. My mother says her family took out a second mortgage on their house. The other side of the tracks. I should know better than to be her friend. My father tries to explain: I鈥檇 shake one鈥檚 hand. I鈥檇 even take blood from one. He says this slowly, carefully, his eyes unblinking and intent, his hands resting on the arms of his chair, his feet planted firmly on the floor. I just don鈥檛 want one marrying my daughter. Loud-mouthed, he means. Godless. Promiscuous. Illegitimate. Leech. But he doesn鈥檛 say it, not to me. Failure. Wretched. Danger. Scourge. Instead, my mother says, Disowned. Disappointment. Disaster. Low-class, she means. Vulgar. Ignorant. Embarrassing, she says in the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors, opening the refrigerator, rooting for nothing in particular. Seriously, she says, turning on the faucet, her palms braced against either side of the sink. What will everyone say? What will everyone think?]
