The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial [Paperback]

Late in 2004, Maggie Nelson was looking forward to the publication of her bookJane: A Murder, a narrative in verse about the life and death of her aunt, who had been murdered thirty-five years before. The case remained unsolved, but Jane was assumed to have been the victim of an infamous serial killer in Michigan in 1969.

Then, one November afternoon, Nelson received a call from her mother, who announced that the case had been reopened; a new suspect would be arrested and tried on the basis of a DNA match. Over the months that followed, Nelson found herself attending the trial with her mother and reflecting anew on the aura of dread and fear that hung over her family and childhood--an aura that derived not only from the terrible facts of her aunt's murder but also from her own complicated journey through sisterhood, daughterhood, and girlhood.

The Red Partsis a memoir, an account of a trial, and a provocative essay that interrogates the American obsession with violence and missing white women, and that scrupulously explores the nature of grief, justice, and empathy.

Available for the first time in paperback

Alternating between a narrative of the trial and a rambling exploration of her own life, Nelson examines the many stereotypes and clich?s of murder, making it seem that no subject could possibly be more embedded in the American consciousness. . . . Nelson is refreshingly self-criticalof herself and her writing project.The New York Times Book Review

Its Nelsons articulation of her many selvesthe poet who writes prose; the memoirist who considers the truth specious; thelc®