Unbrained

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Brenna Womer's latest cross-genre collection examines what Layli Long Soldier calls unbrained things. In her poem Head Count Long Soldier names hormones nursing sleeping night and blood. In Womer's collection she adds shedding shitting birthing fucking flying and more to the list.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the titular hybrid essay Unbrained first published by </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Honey Literary</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Womer considers her recent Bipolar diagnosis by a psychiatric nurse with whom she had a single appointment and never saw again. In the closing essay Thick Like Me which won </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>NELLE</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'s Three Sister's Prize for Creative Nonfiction Womer grapples with a matrilineal legacy of relentless identity-seeking and what of her Mexican heritage she can claim after growing up in whitewashed familial spaces and on U.S. military bases. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In her poetry prose and hybrid work throughout Womer interrogates ownership and indulges appetite; she presses through the softness of fur and fat to the hot core of animal innocence. On every page she asks what's fair but always comes up empty. </span></p><p><br></p>