Constantly surprising, these personal essays explore the attractions and dangers of intimacy and the violence that often arises in close relationships. Deulen’s artful storytelling and dialogue also draw the reader into complicated questions about class, race, and gender.In “Aperture,” she considers how she has contributed to her autistic brother’s isolation from family and from the world. “Theft” investigates her mother’s romantic stories about conquistadors in the context of the ...

Consumed with the accumulation of lost time and unfulfilled longing, Desire Museum by Danielle Cadena Deulen is an intricate exploration of things left unfinished or unsatisfied.Divided into four sections and shaped by female-identified embodiment, Desire Museum touches on lost love and friendship, climate crisis, lesbian relationships, and the imprisonment of children at the U.S.-Mexico border. These poems trace the pleasures and pitfalls of sex,...

Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533–92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne is largely ignored. After Montaigne—a collection of twenty-four new personal essays intended as tribute—aims to correct this collective lapse of memory and introduce modern readers and writers to their stylistic forebear.Though it’s been over four hundre...