Trauma Plot

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue, Vulture, Bustle, LitHub, The A.V. Club, and Autostraddle“Hood has been vulnerable and she has been strong, and it’s the strong Hood who emerges victorious from Trauma Plot. You’ll be rooting for her through every page of this searing memoir.”—Vogue“An innovative, rigorous, genre-bending, and ultimately life-affirming account of what it takes to survive.”—Vulture“Piercing … . Trauma Plot flips the confessional memoir on its head.”—Grace Byron, The Cut“Hood doesn’t indicate whether she feels like she has healed from her past, or what it would look like if she had. But Trauma Plot unambiguously demonstrates her growth as a writer. Like Philomela, Hood alchemizes her suffering into something new.”—Bekah Walkes, The Atlantic“Provocative and incisive … . Hood’s unflinching prose ultimately serves as a bright herald to guide us through the battles that lie ahead.”—Harper’s Bazaar“A candid, at times hard to read recounting of sexual abuse.”—Bustle“Kaleidoscopic … . Trauma Plot is a refusal of the silence around sexual violence, a tapestry woven by bloody fingers.”—Erin Vachon, The Rumpus“Jamie Hood is not only an uncommon thinker, but a world-class explorer of unthought. She descends into the terrifying dark of the unsayable with the dimmest of flashlights and returns bearing verbal gems, treasures, and marvels.”—Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby and Stag Dance“Hood’s writing in Trauma Plot is often devastating and difficult to reckon with, but it’s also deeply vital.”—The A.V. Club“Rendered with raw-nerve clarity … . Hood’s writing is exceptional for its own sake.”—The Telegraph“Hood is one of the most interesting literary critics writing today, and her excavation of trauma and survival is a wonder. Moving, thought-provoking, at once intellectual and deeply personal.”—LitHub“This book devastated me. I found my whole being thrumming with the energy of Hood’s refusals, her intense thinking and feeling, the formal play with the modernist novel, and her clear-eyed reporting in the wake of trauma.”—Kate Zambreno, author of Heroines“Trauma Plot is an ode to the wrecked woman, the bloody battle of survivorship, and the act of writing itself—not because writing can save us, but because it reminds us we’re still alive.”—Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You and Candelaria“Trauma Plot is a sophisticated kind of life writing, and does something far more interesting than claim authenticity through the immediacy of experience.”—McKenzie Wark, e-flux”[Hood] combines literary criticism, pop culture analysis, and personal narrative as part of this difficult but clear-eyed interrogation.”—Autostraddle

Jamie Hood is the author of how to be a good girl, one of Vogue’s Best Books of 2020, and regards, marcel, a monthly newsletter on Proust and other miscellany. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Baffler, Bookforum, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Inquiry, The Drift, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.