Ghost in the frame

The essays in this creative nonfiction collection explore the impact of memory gaps and missing spaces on the stories we tell. Upon her arrival in a new town as a freshman in college, Alysha Hoffa is deeply traumatized from her experiences with abuse both at fourteen and eighteen, the summer before. The present action strand reaching through each essay in this collection moves along the story of a girl growing up with PTSD and learning to live in a body that has betrayed her. Through the use of art and artifact, these missing memories are filled in to form a narrative of her life, lived as best she can. Themes of photography, most notably the photographs of Francesca Woodman, Surrealism, Cubism, and film come up time and again, intersecting Hoffa’s story with that of various artists and their work. Even as these stories intertwine, Hoffa’s relationship with her mother comes into focus. A survivor of abuse herself, her mother’s struggles meld poignantly with the other threads of this collection. Ultimately, the question each of these essays seeks to answer is this: How does our sense of self survive when memory of our experiences is lost?