Confessions of an empty purse

the long version

In these street-wandering confessions, McDonald explores the interstices of gender, perception, and image, floating freely between the depths of narrative and the butterfly brevity of poetry. Here is a text where bodies are mapped onto memories, in turn mapped back onto bodies, a palimpsestic circulation that sometimes storytells, sometimes startles, and always spills its truth, a purse overturned on a page. Ashok Mathur --Cover Blurb A book of poetry that reads compulsively like a novel the anguished and ultimately courageous story of an individual caught between genders. The narrator is caught in the funhouse mirror of movies and pop culture, between dreams and self-loathing. These poems must be read in tandem with 1960s/70s sexual liberation classics: Jacqueline Susann s Valley of the Dolls (1966), a novel never-old; and Rosemary Daniell s Sexual Tour of the Deep South (1974), a set of happening poems. Jury, Dektet 2010 --Cover Blurb About the Author S. MCDONALD was born, raised and continues to live in Toronto. Ze grew up in pre-gentrification Cabbagetown and Regent Park. Ze has performed zir alternative spoken word performance pieces at various venues including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre s annual Rhubarb! Festival. Ze is the love child of Christine Jorgensen & John Rechy & the spiritual godchild of Jacqueline Susann.