An Alphabet for Joanna

A gripping memoir from acclaimed poet Damian Rogers about being raised by a loving but erratic single mother who is today diagnosed with a rare form of frontal-lobe dementia.

Throughout her childhood in Detroit, Damian Rogers was never given a satisfactory account of the circumstances that led to her own birth. The "truth" behind the stories she was told by her single mother—free-spirited, beautiful, troubled Joanna—constantly shifted, and Damian was left with puzzling fragments: her mom's trip to Long Beach, California after finishing high school; a mysterious trauma followed by a psychotic break; then a return home, single and pregnant. Now, as forty-something Damian struggles to cope with Joanna’s early-onset dementia, she realizes she may never know the full story.

A riveting portrait of a time and place (especially the leafy suburbs of Detroit, Michigan in the 1980s), An Alphabet for Joanna is also the moving story of an unconventional mother-daughter relationship. Rogers crafts a unique work that is both a powerful memoir and a meditation on how we build lives out of shifting shards of memory. And by tracing her story into the present day and the difficult reality of Joanna’s life inside a nursing home, she poignantly shows that even when memory falters, we can remain connected through a strong web of art, empathy, imagination and love.

“Succinct, evocative, beautifully written, heartbreaking. . . . Of special interest to all those whose loved ones suffer from dementia.”—Margaret Atwood (via Twitter)

"In a memoir of stunning thoughtfulness, Rogers presents us with a loving treatise on what it means to be human.” —Leanne Betasamosake Simpson