Dark Matters: A Novel [Paperback]

In a dawn raid, Kate is arrested. She is imprisoned, beaten, kept awake and tortured. She has no idea what has happened to her partner, Mercedes. The uncertainty plagues her. It is as if she has no history. Trying to retain her sense of self in a swirling psychic state, she invents stories. And she remembers stories of her mother, her grandmothers and aunts, the rich mythic traditions of Greece. She rearranges them and writes poems in her head. 

 

After Kate’s death, her niece, Desi, is going through boxes of papers, trying to make sense of her aunt’s life. Desi travels to South America and unlocks the history of Mercedes' family: a history of political torture, disappearance and escape.

 

Susan Hawthorne’s dark story uncovers the hidden histories of organized violence against lesbians. She traces fear and uncertainty, and finds a narrative of resilience created through the writing of poems. The author asks: how do we pass on stories hidden by both shame and resistance to shame? A novel that is poetic and terrifying

"Dark Mattersis a transformativetour de force; lyrical as Sappho and revolutionary as Wittig inLes Guérillères." —Roberta Arnold,Sinister Wisdom

"WithDark Matters, Susan Hawthorne has written a remarkable novel that pulls lesbians out of the fissures of marginalization and obscurity to solid ground where lesbian visibility and meaning can emerge." —Garine Roubinian,Rain and Thunder

"This is a book of underworlds and infernos, places of execution, practices of erasure and sites of desire. It documents the practicalities of attempting to break lesbian cultures woman by woman, finger by finger and story by story. Against such violence Hawthorne offers poetry as activism, as remedy, as mode of repair."

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