蜜桃传媒

"Jaydra Johnson鈥檚 LOW: NOTES ON ART AND TRASH is part instruction manual, part genealogy, part art criticism, and part memoir - all of it pulsing with urgency and necessity. It鈥檚 written in wry, straight-ahead prose that hits no false notes, and feels honest and earned at every juncture. Johnson has a real gift for metabolizing and conveying the importance of everything from Othello to performance art to the political activist Emma Goldman. She moves fluently between such analyses and her own vivid, expertly-rendered memories of growing up 鈥渢rash.鈥� She structures her prose artfully (using a 鈥渟onnet crown鈥� motif here, different forms of address there), but always with a light touch, such that her experiments feel vital, buoyant, and without pretension. I especially admire how she leaps over stale binaries about elitism vs. outsider status in art, and claims a place for her artistry (and that of others) fiercely and tenderly on every page. Despite traveling under the humble (if noble) tradition of 鈥渘otes,鈥� LOW鈥檚 provocations and attestations stayed with me long after I turned its final page. I found myself rooting hard for its narrator - while also realizing that there is no need, as she has clearly found her way, and is now our teacher. The sensibility and achievement of this book deserves widespread circulation and contemplation; I hope being chosen as the winner of this contest will provide such an opportunity." ~Maggie Nelson