Reviewed by Miranda Poyser
If you think you know something about the life of a sex worker, How Poetry Saved My Life will make you think again–unless of course you’ve lived the life, and you’re never quite sure you’ll come back from it and look at posters of missing girls that you shared the streets with just days ago.
Amber Dawn’s first novel, Sub Rosa (2010), won the Lambda Literary Award, and she also received the 2012 Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie prize for LGBT writers. In this memoir, she takes you by the hand and shows you a difficult world, with grace, class, and beautiful poetry to soften the grittiness. Though the poetry in itself is often gritty too, the words form together like a work of art you could stare at for hours at the gallery until the security guard throws you out and you vow you’ll be back tomorrow. Lines such as “I was skinny-dipping, drunk under a low-slung Indian summer moon,” mesmerized me.
In three sections, “outside,” “inside,” and “inward,” we are taken into Amber’s life, the university she attended, the tricks she turned, her relationships and steamy sexual encounters, her horror at the murder of a co-worker, and at the police and press for their nonchalant attitudes towards violence against women. We attend the transgender day of remembrance with her and cry for Shelby Tom. Then, we travel with Amber back to her home town in Fort Erie, feel her anxiety and sense of being trapped there, escape with her in hopes of a better life, and accompany her to massage parlours and clients’ houses, feeling the fear when the situation takes a turn for the worse, refusing to put the book down until we know she is safe.
The first section of the book is “outside,” where Amber details her days of working the streets of Vancouver and her life during those times. The second section is “inside,” where Amber gets a job in a massage parlour, taking her work indoors and off the streets; with all the women going missing on Vancouver’s east side, this was the safer option. There, she struggles to fit in among the other girls as they look down upon her going to school and her former occupation as a street worker.
The last section is “inward,” where Amber tells about her home town of Fort Erie, her connection to the Niagara River, and her job at the carnival, which was the break she’d been looking for to leave Fort Erie for good.
How Poetry Saved My Life is an all too common story uncommonly told. It is in the vein of gritty yet beautifully written memoirs such as Evelyn Lau’s Runaway: Diary Of A Street Kid but told from a more mature perspective. In Runaway, it’s a young woman wanting to get her own voice heard, her own point across. In How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber is determined to be a voice for those who have been silenced.
Arsenal Pulp | 160 pages | $15.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1551525006
‘How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir’ by Amber Dawn
Book Reviews
If you think you know something about the life of a sex worker, How Poetry Saved My Life will make you think again–unless of course you’ve lived the life, and you’re never quite sure you’ll come back from it and look at posters of missing girls that you shared the streets with just days ago.
Amber Dawn’s first novel, Sub Rosa (2010), won the Lambda Literary Award, and she also received the 2012 Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie prize for LGBT writers. In this memoir, she takes you by the hand and shows you a difficult world, with grace, class, and beautiful poetry to soften the grittiness. Though the poetry in itself is often gritty too, the words form together like a work of art you could stare at for hours at the gallery until the security guard throws you out and you vow you’ll be back tomorrow. Lines such as “I was skinny-dipping, drunk under a low-slung Indian summer moon,” mesmerized me.
In three sections, “outside,” “inside,” and “inward,” we are taken into Amber’s life, the university she attended, the tricks she turned, her relationships and steamy sexual encounters, her horror at the murder of a co-worker, and at the police and press for their nonchalant attitudes towards violence against women. We attend the transgender day of remembrance with her and cry for Shelby Tom. Then, we travel with Amber back to her home town in Fort Erie, feel her anxiety and sense of being trapped there, escape with her in hopes of a better life, and accompany her to massage parlours and clients’ houses, feeling the fear when the situation takes a turn for the worse, refusing to put the book down until we know she is safe.
The first section of the book is “outside,” where Amber details her days of working the streets of Vancouver and her life during those times. The second section is “inside,” where Amber gets a job in a massage parlour, taking her work indoors and off the streets; with all the women going missing on Vancouver’s east side, this was the safer option. There, she struggles to fit in among the other girls as they look down upon her going to school and her former occupation as a street worker.
The last section is “inward,” where Amber tells about her home town of Fort Erie, her connection to the Niagara River, and her job at the carnival, which was the break she’d been looking for to leave Fort Erie for good.
How Poetry Saved My Life is an all too common story uncommonly told. It is in the vein of gritty yet beautifully written memoirs such as Evelyn Lau’s Runaway: Diary Of A Street Kid but told from a more mature perspective. In Runaway, it’s a young woman wanting to get her own voice heard, her own point across. In How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber is determined to be a voice for those who have been silenced.
Arsenal Pulp | 160 pages | $15.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1551525006