An invitation to compose an essay in Mexico City led Miriam Toews to a project that became A Truce That Is Not Peace. The book centers on her reckoning with the suicides of her father and her sister and examines the personal forces that shaped her career. She turns to other writers’ work for solace, finding Christian Wiman’s essay "The Limit" especially resonant. Wiman recounts childhood violence in West Texas, describes discovering poetry’s kinetic forms and music, and attempts to reinvent his past into a self-contained story. Toews uses letters and ongoing composition to continue conversations with her dead relatives.
In it, Wiman looks back on the violence that marked both his childhood in West Texas and his family's history, and seems to gather that his past made his writing career inevitable. His conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive, because when he first began reading poetry, in college, he believed that "it had absolutely nothing to do with the world I was from." But he no longer believes that assumption was entirely accurate.
Martin points to a different motivation in Toews's case. In the years since the deaths of her father and sister, writing has been a way to continue her conversations with them. Toews first began composing prose when she was a teenager and her older sister, Marj, asked her to send her letters. Decades later, after Marj's suicide, Toews continues putting pen to paper in search of some kind of organized story.
Collection
[
|
...
]