Synopsis
Praise for SILENCES, OHIO and Maud Lavin
“Silences, Ohio is a frank and vivid collection. Full of wonder about Midwestern childhood and the constellation of people in Maud Lavin’s orbit, these lyric essays accrue into a profound meditation on what we say when we speak and do not speak. With shimmering clarity, Lavin reflects on American conventions from small talk to marriage, on race, feminism, home, and love. She considers what cleaves human beings apart and, with attention and care, hopefully back together.”
– Rachel DeWoskin, author of absolute animal and Two Menus
“In Maud Lavin’s patient hands these 14 stories return home to share with us their joys, to offer their advice “To Someone Moving To The Midwest,” and to reveal to us what lies behind the “places of white paint,” an otherness that sounds “wholesome and nearby” but sometimes harbors bigotry, intolerance, and the specter of dark nationalism. In Silences, Ohio, Maud also reminds us that if we can parse the parts unspoken we can create our own language, rich in wisdom and memory, not defined by where we come from but rather where we have determined our voices will be heard.”
–Tim Moder, author of the chapbooks All True Heavens and American Parade Routes
“As a Midwesterner you learn early how to convey more with less. You learn the art of the sigh, the grunt, the shoulder shrug, the trailing off at the end of the sentence . . . . Maud Lavin knows this deep down in her bones and it’s underscored into every short essay in Silences, Ohio. She squeezes more out of this chapbook than the rest of us could in a full-length memoir. Silences is both an ode to Ohio and a critique. It’s a complicated love story the way it is with most Midwesterners and their hometowns. In places like Canton, Ohio, to articulate your full-throated love for your hometown is to be “overly dramatic,” “arrogant,” or “hippy-dippy.” To hate your hometown is to be an ingrate, a whiner, a snob. Lavin nails this dichotomy perfectly. Every essay in here pits pride and nostalgia versus the clear lens of both psychic and physical distance. Silences, Ohio is the life story of a sigh. A shrug. A head nod. A passive aggressive smile. She nails what it’s like to grow up an outsider in the Midwest in every detail included or omitted. Which is to say, she speaks of the Midwest in the language of the Midwest. The difference of course is that Lavin doesn’t remain silent, doesn’t avoid the uncomfortable conversations, doesn’t repress all those emotions that make Midwesterners who they are whether they want to admit it or not. My Midwestern immigrant ancestors from Denmark have a word for what Silences, Ohio is: lagom. Just enough, not too much, not too little. Just right. That’s what Silences, Ohio is.”
–Ben Drevlow, author of The Book of Rusty, A Good Ram is Hard to Find, and other books
“Silences, Ohio is a book that truly fulfills Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.” With an artist’s eye for the perfect detail or snatch of dialogue, Maud Lavin delivers reports on the cultural landscape of the Midwest, on family, friendship, love, and loss that break any silence, and by the end of this book, broke my heart.”
–Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Space: A Childhood Memoir and the graphic memoir French Girl
Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.
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