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Full Description
When Amy E. Wallen's southern, blue-collar, peripatetic family was transferred from Ely, Nevada, to Lagos, Nigeria, she had just turned seven. From Nevada to Nigeria and on to Peru, Bolivia, and Oklahoma, the family wandered the world, living in a state of constant upheaval. When We Were Ghouls follows Wallen's recollections of her family who, like ghosts, came and went and slipped through her fingers, rendering her memories unclear. Were they a family of grave robbers, as her memory of the pillaging of a pre-Incan grave site indicates? Are they, as the author's mother posits, "hideous people?" Or is Wallen's memory out of focus?
In this quick-paced and riveting narrative, Wallen exorcizes these haunted memories to clarify the nature of her family and, by extension, her own character. Plumbing the slipperiness of memory and confronting what it means to be a "good" human, When We Were Ghouls links the fear of loss and mortality to childhood ideas of permanence. It is a story about family, surely, but it is also a representation of how a combination of innocence and denial can cause us to neglect our most precious earthly treasures: not just our children but the artifacts of humanity and humanity itself.
Contents
List of Illustrations
When We Were Ghouls
Part 1. Nigeria
Redneck Arrival
My Baptism
Under the Dogonyaro Tree
One Without the Other
What Won't Rub Off
From Gypsy to Socialite
Bees and Bad Men
Christmas Execution
Pine-Solo
Two New Knees
The Vestibule
Part 2. Peru
Deer in the Headlights
Arriving at Midnight
Seeds Don't Grow in a Hotel
Buche de Noel
The Lima Welcome Wagon
Godzilla, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Black Magic and a Guitar Solo
Phantom Limb
Christmas Bird
Our Best Imitation of Gringos
The Butcher Gets Bigger
Part 3. Bolivia
Taking Flight
Tabloids and Cigarettes
Politicians in the Living Room
The Chicken-Wire Menagerie
What I Do See
Part 4. Reentry
Helter Skelter
Images on a Paper Soul
What remains
Acknowledgments
