Accomplished storyteller Kristen Millares Young's communion with an ancient mother goddess and her quest to reconcile the incongruities of her "maddening matriarchs" provide an intriguing thematic framework for her first memoir-in-essays, Desire Lines. The Cuban American author's 15 essays traverse volcanic landscapes and oceanic depths, Spanish villages and Parisian museum archives, in pursuit of "unfettered" joyful mothering and "a version of femininity" she can believe in.
Desire lines, Young (Subduction) explains, are "paths that emerge, eroded yet unforeseen, next to the routes that were planned for us." Raised in Florida by her abuela and abuelo while her mercurial mother, Carmen, supported the family, Young was expected to embrace Catholicism and remain silent about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her maternal grandfather, a pedophile. "Paternal indifference" and Carmen's refusal to confront what happened to her daughter affect the author "more deeply than the abuse itself." The essay "Of Meteorites and Matrimony" recounts Young's artistic and literary discovery of the Roman goddess Cybele, an "archetype of women's sexuality." Cybele's wielding of her ferocious power fascinates the author, because it stands in contrast to the women in her family who refused to assert their own powers to protect Young in childhood.
As the author gazes through the clarifying lenses of midlife, motherhood, and a loving marriage to make peace with her past, Young provides an intellectually courageous road map for readers reconciling the cracks in their own family narratives. Embedded with gems from other feminist icons, Desire Lines is the graceful work of a writer triumphantly exerting her right, "like a goddess," to bask in her "own radiance." --Shahina Piyarali