Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions

Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions

Guisinger, Penny

Paperback

Series: American Lives

Biographies GeneralGeneral Gender StudiesGLBTQIA Studies

Publisher Price: $22.95

ISBN10: 1496238907
ISBN13: 9781496238900
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: Mar 1 2024
Pages: 190
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.44 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Winner of the 2025 Maine Literary Award

Penny Guisinger was not always attracted to women. In Shift she recounts formative relationships with women and men, including the marriage that produced her two children and ultimately ended in part due to her affair with her now-wife. Beginning her story as straight and ending as queer, she struggles to make sense of how her identity changed so profoundly while leaving her feeling like the same person she's always been. While covering pivotal periods of her life, including previous relationships and raising her children across the chasm of divorce, Guisinger reaches for quantum physics, music theory, planetary harmonics, palmistry, and more to interrogate her experiences. This personal story plays out against the backdrop of the national debate on same-sex marriage, in rural, easternmost Maine, where Guisinger watched her neighbors vote against the validity of her family.

Shift examines sexual and romantic fluidity while wrestling with the ways past and present mingle rather than staying in linear narratives. Under scrutiny, Guisinger's sense of her own identity becomes like a Mobius strip or Penrose triangle--an optical illusion that challenges the dimensions and possibilities of the world.

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