AUTUMN SONG: ESSAYS ON ABSENCE
We all live lives littered with what we leave behind: Places we once lived. Friendships we once had. Dreams we once envisioned. The people we once were. Each new day we attempt to find a way to continue living despite the absences we experience because of loss and disappointment, injustice and inequity, change and the passage of time.
Autumn Song: Essays on Absence invites readers into one Black woman’s experiences encountering absences, seeing beyond the empty spaces, and grasping at the glimmers of glory that remain. In a world marred with brokenness, these glimmers speak to the possibility of grieving losses, healing heartache, and allowing ourselves to be changed.
University of Nebraska Press (American Lives Series)
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Praise for Autumn song
“This gorgeous collection of essays about home and belonging cast a spell on me, with its gentle yet sharp observations and evocative sense of place . . . Underlying these contemplative essays is an urgency to make sense of a world that often feels chaotic and frightening. Autumn Song: Essays on Absence is a necessary book, one I will return to again and again.”—Geeta Kothari, author of I Brake for Moose and Other Stories
“Patrice Gopo deftly plunges the reader into a life that weaves the personal with the political—and spotlights patterns of beauty amid the chaotic and often racist American fabric, both past and present. Gopo’s prose is vivid and gorgeous. I remembered her memories and her family long after I finished the book.”—Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and Circa
“Patrice Gopo brings a contemplative eye and heart to the small but poignant details that comprise the miracle of everyday life. Though subtitled Essays on Absence, Autumn Song displays a hopeful focus on what is present and affirming . . . Walking through these essays with Gopo is a profound and gratifying journey.”—Sophfronia Scott, author of The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton
“With startling finesse and unmooring insight, Autumn Song: Essays on Absence will recalibrate your senses to understand there actually is no such thing as void or emptiness at all. . . . Autumn Song is an ode to the artistry of seeing oneself in a world of fast glances and forgotten histories.”—Lisa Factora-Borchers, author, activist, and editor of Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence
About the author
Patrice Gopo is the author of All the Colors We Will See, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and All the Places We Call Home. She lives with her family in North Carolina, where she enjoys walks just after dawn and thinks a perfect day ends with ice cream. Please visit www.patricegopo.com to learn more.