- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
When Amy E. Wallen's southern, blue-collar, peripatetic family was transferred from Ely, Nevada, to Lagos, Nigeria, she hadjust turned seven. From Nevada to Nigeria and on to Peru, Bolivia, and Oklahoma, the family wandered the world, living in a stateof constant upheaval. When We Were Ghouls follows Wallen's recollections of her familywho, like ghosts, cameand wentand slipped through her fingers, rendering her memories unclear. Were they a family of grave robbers, as her memory of the pillaging of a pre-Incan grave site indicates? Are they, as the author's mother posits, "hideous people?" Or is Wallen's memory out of focus? In this quick-paced and riveting narrative, Wallen exorcizes these haunted memories to clarify the nature of her family and, by extension, her own character. Plumbing the slipperiness of memory and confrontingwhat it means to be a "good" human, When We Were Ghouls links the fear of loss and mortality to childhood ideas of permanence. It is astory about family, surely, but it is also a representation of how a combination of innocence and denial can cause us to neglect our most precious earthly treasures: not just our children but the artifacts of humanity and humanity itself.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- When We Were Ghouls
- Part 1
- Redneck Arrival
- My Baptism
- Under the Dogonyaro Tree
- One Without the Other
- What Won’t Rub Off
- From Gypsy to Socialite
- Bees and Bad Men
- Christmas Execution
- Pine-Solo
- Two New Knees
- The Vestibule
- Part 2
- Deer in the Headlights
- Arriving at Midnight
- Seeds Don’t Grow in a Hotel
- Buche de Noel
- The Lima Welcome Wagon
- Godzilla, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
- Black Magic and a Guitar Solo
- Phantom Limb
- Christmas Bird
- Our Best Imitation of Gringos
- The Butcher Gets Bigger
- Part 3
- Taking Flight
- Tabloids and Cigarettes
- Politicians in the Living Room
- The Chicken-Wire Menagerie
- What I Do See
- Part 4
- Helter Skelter
- Images on a Paper Soul
- What Remains
- Acknowledgments
- About Amy E. Wallen
- Series List