Desire Lines - by Kristen Millares Young (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In her debut memoir, award-winning novelist and journalist Kristen Millares Young seeks possibilities for women's liberation amid the ongoing erosion of our human rights. Desire Lines excavates submerged truths about motherhood, the body and the sacred.

Desire Lines takes its title from footpaths--of necessity, defiance and longing--that emerge next to the routes that were planned for us. Challenging herself to be a mother unlike what she has known, Millares Young centers her own body as a site of resistance and making.

Tracing her matrilineage from Cuba to Spain, Millares Young uncovers the remnants of a pagan cult whose mother goddess, Cybele, was erased to make way for the Virgin Mary. But Cybele was no virgin.

On the edge of an impasse, written as both invitation and veil, Desire Lines reclaims the power siphoned from women's stories, wielding the lyric essay for awakening consciousness.

Review Quotes

"In this tremendous collection, Kristen Millares Young grips the reader's hand and leads us into the terrifying place where all life comes from. She is intrepid, incisive. Generous and unsparing is her consideration of mothering, the ordinary and glorious act that keeps the world renewing itself. I loved this book."
--Elissa Washuta, PEN Open Book Award finalist, author of White Magic and My Body is a Book of Rules.

"In Desire Lines, Kristen Millares Young explores womanhood, human rights, and identity with a moral imperative and artistry that few writers achieve. She is an immense literary talent, and this remarkable book should be read by all."
--Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist, author of The Removed

"These emotionally gripping essays delve into the complexities of familial love and obligation. Kristen Millares Young seamlessly weaves together personal experience, historical research, mythology, and cultural critique in a collection that feels both timely and timeless. Her prose is alive with style and poetic lyricism."
--Weike Wang, winner of PEN/Hemingway and Whiting awards, author of Chemistry and Joan is Okay

"Kristen Millares Young is a fearless woman who will go places other writers might fear to tread. I have admired her fierce honesty and craft for a long time and am thrilled to have this explosive and daring collection in my hands. More, please."
--Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Devil's Highway

"Kristen Millares Young brings a searching, generous, and unrelenting gaze to every subject she writes on, most of all herself."
--Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award winner, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

About the Author

Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Her essays and reviews appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Alone Together, and Broken Free. A former Hugo House Prose Writer-in-Residence, she is the editor of Seismic, a Washington State Book Award finalist. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced "Snow Fall," which won a Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Seattle.