Where previously we had a book of “Mutter,” the German for mother, or, a barely audible vocal expression, a pattern of speech that can only be discerned in places, we now have “Project,” a word that lends itself much more to an academic or structured piece of writing. The 11 talks are gathered as appendices, labeled A to K, and mixed into Zambreno’s research are events in her current life, predominantly her entrance into motherhood, and themes of aging creative friendships, such as with writer Sofia Samatar and her writing and teaching life. Written in part to house the excess from Book of Mutter, as well as to have something to present at talks where she was asked to read from the previous title when she didn’t wish to, Zambreno’s new work, Appendix Project: Talks and Essays, is a revelatory project of excavation and understanding.Īs a sequel of sorts to Book of Mutter, Appendix Project extends much of the investigation into grief writing and other kinds of artistic exploration while following a more traditional essay form. The fusion of autobiography and research is not new to Zambreno’s work: her 2012 book Heroines she created similarly, and it certainly didn’t release all the thoughts on grief she had.

A mixture of memoir, essay, and poetry, the form of the work mimicked the way grief presents - a collection of research and personal recollections, a scrapbook of grief. Kate Zambreno’s 2017 Book of Mutter was the culmination of a 13-year project to write about the death of her mother. As grief has no timeline, no end date, there is also no end to the spillover it can produce. The bleating pain of grief feels too much to contain: it wants to spill over life’s contents, to be shared, to be halved, to be understood. LIKE AN INFLAMED APPENDIX, the dull, ongoing, and incessant pain of grief feels unnecessary, excessive, like something that needs to be cut out of you, but unlike an appendix, it cannot be surgically removed. And without a mother you have only, I think: a reader.

Heroines by kate zambreno