Darwin8u's Reviews > Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land

"It is all heartbreak, at least if you've given over your heart."
- Toni Jensen, Carry



Certainly this is a memoir. Certainly it is a collection of essays. But Toni Jensen's book is way more complicated than that. Its prose beats with a poetic cadence. It is poetic both in its construction and its precision. Toni uses repetition to create almost a chant, a heartbeat, a lyrical prayer to tie the book's themes together. She is reporting on the familiar. That is the scary thing. We have, through lazy language and a shared dissimulation, ignored the violence that is our history and our present. We talk about it. But we also talk around it. We like to pretend this violence is exceptional. We like to feel like it is not the rule. Jensen shows us, however, through her experience and her refusal to buy into the familiar tropes, the signs that exist (both literal and figurative). We are a violent country. We have a gun problem.

One of the ways she ties this book's essays together is through her use of Webster's Dictionary. Her use of the dictionary does a couple things. First, through multiple definitions for a word, Toni is able to link the various themes in the book. She also uses the dictionary as a way to show that this is a memoir (of essays) as much about the language of violence as it is about those who are hurt by violence and those who do the hurting. We need to name things well. We need to be aware when the naming of things is being used to obfuscate, to misdirect, to disengage.

Finally, and more subtly, Toni is showing us how language is one of the ways we can protect ourselves. Words matter. Stories matter. Perspective matter. Giving voice to those who are hurt in our country matters. A dictionary isn't going to solve every problem, but it might just stop one bullet. Language might give one girl a refuge.