Emily D. and You and Me: Women Reflect on Identity, Trauma, Housekeeping, Death, Gardens, and Awakening
Ebook
Overview
This books invites us to think for ourselves about what gives us meaning. As one of the book’s two main characters, Emily Dickinson wrote for the ages but not for herself. She closed off her heart rather than tell what would ravage the hearts of others. After a “visit” from Emily, the author decided to invent a journal for her drawn from her letters and poetry. She gives Emily a prose voice. This journal makes up half the book. The other half is counterpoint reflections from the author’s own journals. The two of them reflect, through the themes, on issues women have faced throughout history. One of the themes is Awakening. This led to journal entries about archetypes--an image that fed their spirits and kept their feet on the ground. Readers are challenged to claim an archetype of their own. This is the author’s idea for supplanting old order and roles with a method for re-ordering from the impetus of an archetype. Eventually, this book attempts to articulate her understanding of what Emily’s appearance intended. She suggests what Emily suppressed. Both voices are heard.
“Emily Dickinson is a most subtle poet who wrote in deceptively
simple forms. She has found an ideal reader in Ellen Harrington,
who is herself a subtle explorer of art and spirit with a gift for
simple and powerful expression of the insights and pleasures she
has gleaned from her time with Emily.”
—Lawrence Sutin, author of Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story
of Love and Resistance
“Emily D. and You and Me is at once a painful, insightful,
and hopeful book. . . . Ellen’s beautifully written
self-revelation of her pain and her healing journey will encourage
many readers to know that they don’t have to be permanent prisoners
of childhood violations. A meaningful and whole life is possible.
Well done, Ellen . . . brilliantly conceived and
executed.”
—Michael Lapsley, Director, Institute for Healing of Memories,
South Africa
“Harrington has created visions of two lives—her own and Emily
Dickinson’s—and has found a structure that allows these two voices
to reach into any reader’s psyche. . . . Harrington
claims Dickinson as spirit guide and companion and moves
effortlessly between her own moments of growth and the getting of
wisdom, and her deep knowledge . . . as she recreates
Dickinson’s life and times and soul work. I’m very glad this book
is in the world.”
—Deborah Keenan, author of Willow Room, Green Door
- Title: Emily D. and You and Me: Women Reflect on Identity, Trauma, Housekeeping, Death, Gardens, and Awakening
- Author: Ellen Harrington
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666719222, 9781666719208, 9781666719215, 1666719226, 166671920X, 1666719218
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666719222
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T19:54:04Z
Ellen Harrington is a supporter of the global sisterhood of
women, a trauma survivor, and a Dickinson scholar whose work has
appeared in The Emily Dickinson International Society
Bulletin. She has an MFA in writing from Hamline
University.