True crime ( Jane: A Murder), in which a woman, Nelson’s aunt, is murdered. Book by book, Nelson has swallowed and tuned up genres the way an auto shop brings rust buckets back from the dead. Broadly speaking, these flashbacks, flash forwards, and asides serve to underscore or complicate Nelson’s reflections on issues like the limitations of language, what it means to be “queer,” and the nature of identity.Watching Maggie Nelson think has been one of the most satisfying pleasures in American life these grim past two decades. Winnicott, Judith Butler, and Roland Barthes. Within this general narrative structure, Nelson often pauses to recount events that took place outside the main timeframe of the book, or to reflect on the work of philosophers and theorists including D. The Argonauts ends with Nelson giving birth to Iggy-a scene Nelson juxtaposes with Dodge’s firsthand account of sitting by his mother’s bedside as she dies. By the time she becomes pregnant with Iggy, Dodge has already been on testosterone for several months and has top surgery scheduled, so the couple’s physical transformations take place in tandem. Nevertheless, Dodge goes ahead with these medical interventions, and at the same time, Nelson begins undergoing IVF treatments in an attempt to become pregnant. Nelson, meanwhile, is worried about Dodge, but also anxious about how he might change if he chooses to pursue a mastectomy and testosterone injections. Dodge’s mother has recently been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and Dodge himself is increasingly unhappy with his female body. Meanwhile, Nelson has begun acting as a stepmother to Dodge’s son from a prior relationship-a role that stirs up complex feelings for Nelson since her own mother had left her father (who died shortly afterwards) to marry a man who later left her in turn.Ībout a year after Nelson and Dodge begin living together, their relationship hits a rough patch.
The two enter a passionate and highly intellectual relationship, buy a house and move in together, and marry on the spur of the moment when it looks as though Proposition 8 (banning same-sex marriage) is likely to pass the California Legislature. Dodge is an artist and, though assigned female at birth, identifies as neither a man nor a woman by the time Nelson meets him. The Argonauts does employ a very loose chronological structure, beginning with the early days of Nelson’s relationship with her eventual husband, Harry Dodge, and ending with the birth of their child, Iggy.
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