SPEED READING: Trailer Trash / Andie Woodard
Trailer Trash
Andie Woodward
Bottlecap Press
Review by
Lauren Parker
Welcome to Speed Reading, our fast, occasionally flippant, review column where we attempt to spread the love of a recent new release in a very short amount of time. We’ll take the time to find some incredible books, you spend your time reading some incredible books.
So, what’s Trailer Trash about?
Memoric poetry about how patriarchy and classism come together to harrow the living experience of people who are women or who have been socialized by women. It’s about isolation, abuse, desperation, and how systems lock up voices.
And, who’s the author?
Andie Woodard
What’s their deal?
Woodard is a narrative nonfiction writer, editor, and poet. They also do not like the Oxford comma and thus I apologize for using it.
What’s a single reason to read Trailer Trash?
Classism is so abundant that it can be hard to recognize it from your environment. Trailer Trash embraces the raw and constantly evolving nature of trauma and abuse and survival. Sometimes we need a breadcrumb trail.
What are a couple more reasons to read Trailer Trash?
Memoir and poetry are two genres that are incredibly linked but rarely spoken together. This collection is memoir as poetry and it works so well with the form.
If you’re a fan of these books, you should give Trailer Trash a chance:
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth / Sarah Smarsh Suburban Monastery Death Poem / D.A. Levy
Inheritance Tax / Jason Floyd Williams
A small taste of Trailer Trash:
The light from the TV flickers
Making shadows on the wall
Monsters with fire-breathing mouths.
I inhale Mommy’s smoke.
The soles of my feet are black.
You’re a dirty girl, someone says
Through the white noise.
Someone is crying
Or laughing
Or making a sound like they’re
Glad. It’s hard to tell.
Don’t look, Mommy says,
A little more from Lauren Parker:
These reviews are supposed to be short, clipped, abrupt.
Fuck off.
The burn barrel had a name. It was the same name as all the turtles we caught. The same for every car that sat on blocks. Every mailbox that poked out of the snow.
Algernon.
It was the perfect name for something you wanted to love and for what needed to take things away.
When people talk about the smell of fires, we smell different things. They smell cedar and pine cut wood, the romance of a cabin.
I smell burning potato chip bags and old tires. Nostalgia stinks and blackens the metal trash can you burn your excess in.
Algernon was the name of the school bus driver who picked me up at the end of my driveway on the country highway, my jacket reeking of my dad’s cigarettes and the truck’s gasoline.
Algernon was the code word my mother made me choose in the event someone tried to kidnap me, again, so that I would know if she really sent someone to get me from school.
I always wished I could hug Algernon, whomever he was. In whatever form he took, even if he was a snapping turtle. Hold him close and tell him that I had named everything after him. Have him whisper that he had named everything after me. That we would take care of each other.
Woodard made me feel that.
