Trespasses

"Utterly hip, while at the same time a voice from another era, Trespasses is about ‘growing up in a poor farming town in the Great Plains,' an examination of the term ‘white trash' through interviews, research, and memory, and an evocation of a place many of us will never see. Yet, at its heart, it is a lyric evocation of self. Plainspoken, tattooed, and brilliant, Lacy Johnson pushes the boundaries of what memoir-and, perhaps more importantly, what any of us-can be."-Nick Flynn

"I was riveted by Trespasses-written with the haunting interiority of poetry and the compelling drive of prose. Much like being caught in a novel by Faulkner or Morrison, I found myself thinking about large important issues without initially understanding how Lacy Johnson's language carried me there."-Claudia Rankine

"The middle of nowhere for some is her home in rural Missouri for Lacy Johnson, and it's a place she loves but where she cannot stay. That trouble of her heart is beautifully mapped in the quiet, beguiling Trespasses. Writing in a multiplicity of voices that surprise but also ring true, Johnson digs into the notions of ‘home' with a clear-eyed reverence for family and the emblems of Middle America: silo and sparrow nest, shotgun and sewing table."-Ryan Van Meter, author, If You Knew Then What I Know Now

"A haircut. A breakfast. A ride to school. An adolescent transgression. In Trespasses, Lacy M. Johnson etches indelibly the texture of a life that is lovely, horrifying, and hallowed. Her writing is a marvel: a microsectioning of the simplest memory, a peeling and lifting of each layer to reveal new truths that the reader keeps recognizing. Focusing on being defined by class, Johnson simultaneously transcends it and presents us a primer on how to see as humans."-Melissa J. Delbridge, author, Family Bible