Through it all, Dixon, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee who has published a chapbook and co-hosts the New Books in Poetry podcast, demonstrates her poetic sensibility. Her courage in writing into and through her wounds reminds us that people are not neatly packaged products, but rather works in progress. In “Once Upon an AOL,” Dixon tackles her divorce, the writing so raw that one wonders if a bit more healing might have made it easier to put words on the page.
The essays “Vagina, Slightly Used” and “Lakeshore” talk candidly about relationships and sex, while “An Imprint Instead of a Flash” addresses depression and suicidal ideation. Here and throughout the collection, the narrator’s vulnerability is on display. As if I can’t be all of those things” (66). I’m afraid, in some ways, to shout out to the world what makes me angry or happy or sad or horny. In the same essay, she reveals just how distressing this lack of visibility–even when self-imposed–can be: “I don’t even know who I am beneath what I’ve constructed and the parts of me I’m unwilling to speak about. But a whole pie chart? That whole Athena? I don’t think that’s happened yet and I’m not sure it will. Some may even see me in varying overlaps, a Venn diagram of who and what Athena is, if you will. I know they see me as a daughter, a sister, a friend, a co-worker, and an employee. In “Reader Insert,” she expresses this with the language of pie charts and Venn diagrams: This blend of intersectionality and self-effacement appears throughout the book, whose narrator paradoxically fears both invisibility and being truly seen. It is power in the ability to say “this space is to be occupied any way I see fit.” I am simply trying not to cause waves, trying to prove through my folding and tucking that I belong here. There is privilege there that impacts our bodies in different ways. The title essay includes a masterful example in which the narrator compares herself to another heavy-set woman on a plane:īut she is not just fat. Dixon explores the nuances of what it means to be Black (including how and what kind of Black she considers herself to be), Midwestern, middle class, educated, overweight (she does not shy away from saying “fat”), chronically ill (with lymphedema), and divorced. It comes as no surprise, then, that Athena Dixon’s essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, feels so relevant: intersectionality and vulnerability reverberate from page to page. Whether it be a deep dive into the work of Brené Brown or a reckoning with structural racism, these two topics have been on many people’s minds.
If I had to choose two words to talk about the past twelve months–let’s make that two constructive words–intersectionality and vulnerability would be strong contenders.