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Abstract
ABSTRACT"Mooncalf: Essays is a collection envisioning the open/experimental essay as the terrain where poetry breaks down in face of the social. In particular, the essay form makes itself necessary for grappling with the complexities of identity, privilege, and passing. Intertwining personal confession with cultural criticism, the book fixates on race, addiction, trauma, and neurodivergence, asking what it means for ones own suffering to count. It explores the writers relationship to the wealthy Silicon Valley ethnoburb where she grew up, as well as to the impoverished and gentrifying neighborhoods in various cities where she later worked in homeless services.