Tears, Bra, and All

A memoir spanning lyric essay, childhood games, assemblage, and traditional poetic form, Tears, Bra, and All tells a story of refashioning. 

How is memory a material? Can something deemed trash be meaningful and made anew?  

The book opens with a stalking. The constant rattle of a doorknob haunts Annastacia as she tries to move on after her university's failure - and refusal - to protect her. Stegall reconfigures this memory, its aftermath, and other violences into new forms for readers to write on, cut, fold, and play with. Poems materialize as cootie catchers, games of M.A.S.H., and more as she revisits past events with a louder voice. 

She adds this voice to a chorus in the book's final section, documenting the sewing of a corset from other people's trash that invokes the found-object art and history of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

Stegall's writing vibrates with rage and lingers in patches of sunlight. It summons ancient tragedies, converses with avant-garde artists and poets, and takes careful note of outfits. Tears, Bra, and All is an extraordinary work of autobiographical collage that gives readers a participatory role - and "trash" a more expansive meaning.