Sister Golden Hair by Darcey Steinke
Sister Golden Hair by Darcey Steinke, faculty, the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School.
Tin House Books, 2014
“[Sister Golden Hair] absolutely dazzled me . . . a searingly accurate portrait of a time and a way of thinking—a moment in American history when gleeful abandon had decayed into regular old abandon, and when new cultural freedoms suddenly seemed more dangerous than intoxicating.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things
“Sister Golden Hair is an indelible portrait of a place and time; an argument for adolescent girlhood as a fulcrum for the human predicament; and sentence by sentence, a brilliant piece of writing suffused with all Steinke’s characteristic wit, darkness, and profundity. As always, Steinke shifts the terms: it isn’t our capacity to be saved or go down in flames that’s most at stake, but our willingess to hold the dangerous, bleak, exciting, full mess of life up to the light, to behold and bear its mottled grace. Steinke has become a master at this fearless beholding, and I trust her deeply, will go wherever she wants to take me.” —Maggie Nelson, author of Bluets