Heavier Than Wait is a tender guide to a queer experience in mental illness. Evander challenges the idea that apathy equals stability through her exploration of dysmorphia and dissociation in mental health. Here, the body is not just a thing of flesh, but a being filled with possibility and bound by tangibility. Using hypertext, memory, and interrogation of truth, Evander showcases the pains and hopes of healing.
"'I forget my name and that is an act of self-love, ' writes Ilyus Evander in this moving debut, where dissociation and dysphoria make complicated knots with healing. Here, the body is both angelic ghost and mechanical saboteur; at once mythical in its promises and heavy with its limitations. Evander navigates the contradictions of this journey with formal imagination, emotional verve, and a refusal to chart any easy paths to triumph. Yet this is a collection wrought, too, with something like hope--something, at least, like the belief that new names might grow in the old one's place."--Franny Choi
Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. Women's Studies. Art.
