Trauma Plot

Praise

A Most Anticipated Book by Vogue, Vulture, Bustle, LitHub, The A.V. Club, Our Culture and Autostraddle

“There’s nothing remotely easy about this book . . . but the tale that Hood tells dives deep and is richly layered and worth reading . . . . 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

“Provocative and incisive memoir . . . . Suffice to say, this book is far from an easy read, but it is incandescently one of a kind. 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 . . . . [Hood] addresses that, in the literary world, the “trauma plot” has fallen out of fashion; that people are tiring of bodies that keep the score. And yet, there is still a power in a woman telling her story.”
—Bustle

“Kaleidoscopic . . . . Trauma Plot severs perspectives, then reassembles them again in a shape that feels, if not whole, then fully awake to its edges. The writer runs her fingers along every seam . . . . Trauma Plot is a refusal of the silence around sexual violence, a tapestry woven by bloody fingers. Why write about rape in a world devoid of justice? Hood asks how you could write about anything else. If our stories meant nothing, they wouldn’t have to cut out our tongues.”
—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. Trauma Plot is a glass case of such wonders.”
—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; she’s a remarkable critic, illuminating what you know is there, turning your head towards it. Read it, then see it everywhere.”
—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, Trauma Plot will change the way you think about the act of writing. This is a book that both demands and rewards your rapt attention.”
—LitHub

“A defense, without being defensive, of life writing and of writing through trauma . . . Trauma Plot is a sophisticated kind of life writing, and does something far more interesting than claim authenticity through the immediacy of experience . . . . There’s a directness to Hood’s sentences. They cut to the matter.”
—McKenzie Wark, e-flux

“[Hood] combines literary criticism, pop culture analysis, and personal narrative as part of this difficult but clear-eyed interrogation.”
—Autostraddle

“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. An American Annie Ernaux, Hood writes to avenge her people—with incendiary brilliance, wit, pain, and devotion to the search for something like truth.”
—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

“Bold and layered.”
—The Millions

“With bracing detail, a practiced poetic consciousness, and something like foreboding mysticism, [Hood] excavates the layers of both her personal experience and what it reflects about sexualized violence against women generally and transwomen in particular . . . . Here, the artistic intentionality of Hood’s narration meets the genius of her project . . . . A magnificent, norm-shattering work.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Brilliant . . . with piercing intellect and lyrical prose, Hood redraws the boundaries of the tell-all memoir. It’s a rare feat of storytelling.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Hood’s writing is strong, elegant, and precise . . . profoundly powerful and compelling . . . . [She] is simultaneously a lyrical poet who uses language in unexpected ways and an unflinchingly honest, keen observer of base ugliness.”
—Booklist