
- This event has passed.
Toni Jensen: Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
October 26, 2021 @ EST 7:30 pm - 8:15 pm
FreeScroll down and select “Get Tickets”
to receive a Zoom link to this virtual event.
Toni Jensen grew up around guns: As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten.
In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America.
In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history—as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates.
“Carry explores the gun’s tragic impact with heartfelt prose and deep intellect—on politics, on history, on Black and Indigenous bodies, on women’s bodies, and on children behind closed doors . . . It is full of difficult and vital news, delivered right on time.”—Terese Marie Mailhot, New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries
Toni Jensen teaches in the MFA programs at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a 2020 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and her work has been published in Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone. She is Métis.
Buy your books at Ampersand and join the conversation!
Toni Jensen:
Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
Events are conducted EST via Zoom, a virtual platform. Though events are admission-free, to participate, please register by the deadline using the ticket portal below. Zoom links are emailed to registered participants.
Admission to Visiting Authors events is free, but you’re encouraged to consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support Writers & Books. Your tax-deductible gift will help ensure that reading, writing, and the free exchange of ideas will flourish.