Outtakes

Outtakes asks the difficult questions with humor and a deft, lighthearted hand. Why are we here? How can we exist? Why do we make art? Joanna Acevedo portrays a young memoirist's experience of a life that is broken, beautiful, and confusing all at once. In one essay, the narrator navigates being a literary citizen while going to readings and finding strange and surprising things. In another, she anticipates her partners' violence, undoing years of learned trauma and trying to believe people can be good. In yet another essay, the narrator falls in love with a woman for the first time and relishes in the experiential pleasure of simply being with someone. Born of misplaced love and frantic experimentation, Outtakes explores the confessional through the lens of the universal, yielding up unexpected joy, inevitable pain, and brilliant light.