Body Leaping Backward
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Body Leaping Backward by Maureen Stanton
The "mesmerizing . . . daring and important"* story of a risk-taking girlhood spent in a working-class prison town*Andre Dubus III
For Maureen Stanton's proper Catholic mother, the town's maximum security prison was a way to keep her seven children in line ("If you don't behave, I'll put you in Walpole Prison!"). But as the 1970s brought upheaval to America, and the lines between good and bad blurred, Stanton's once-solid family lost its way. A promising young girl with a smart mouth, Stanton turns watchful as her parents separate and her now-single mother descends into shoplifting, then grand larceny, anything to keep a toehold in the middle class for her children. No longer scared by threats of Walpole Prison, Stanton too slips into delinquency--vandalism, breaking and entering--all while nearly erasing herself through addiction to angel dust, a homemade form of PCP that swept through her hometown in the wake of Nixon's "total war" on drugs.
Body Leaping Backward is the haunting and beautifully drawn story of a self-destructive girlhood, of a town and a nation overwhelmed in a time of change, and of how life-altering a glimpse of a world bigger than the one we come from can be.
Maureen Stanton's work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Florida Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Sun, and others, as well as anthologies such as Best of The Sun, Best of Brevity, and Best Texas Writing. In the Best American Essays series, five of her essays were named Noteworthy Essays. A Pushcart Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Iowa Review nonfiction award, and the American Literary Review nonfiction prize are among her many honors. She is currently an instructor at the University of Missouri, where she teaches creative nonfiction.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781328900234 |
| ISBN 10 | 1328900231 |
| Title | Body Leaping Backward |
| Author | Maureen Stanton |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Mariner Books |
| Year published | 2019-07-16 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |