In the Dream House (2019)-Carmen Maria Machado

This book has the most engaging combination of emotion and creativity and charm.

Content Warnings: Domestic abuse, emotional abuse, sexual content, homophobia

Representation: Cuban, Latine, queer, plus sized, wlw

Favorite Quote: “Most types of domestic abuse are completely legal.”

        In the Dream House is an emotional memoir detailing the author’s experiences coming into her identities and navigating an abusive relationship. This story is told through a series of short chapters entitled different similes for what the author calls “the Dream House.” This Dream House is the author’s name for the house her abusive girlfriend lived in during their long-distance relationship. This house becomes a symbol of dread and fear and also complicated feelings of affection during the periods she stays there.

        As a fat, queer woman, the author Carmen explains, Carmen maintains a feeling that she is lucky to have found someone who desires her and uses this as justification for the abusive actions of her girlfriend. She tells this, however, in a disconnected style by addressing her past self as “you” and never names the abusive girlfriend but rather refers to her only as “she” and “the woman in the Dream House.”

        Throughout the book, the author tells not only her story but also the researched stories of other queer women who have faced abuse from the hands of another woman. She explains that literature around abuse in sapphic relationships is extremely limited and does not date back as early as these instances surely took place. Furthermore, having grown up in a religious and homophobic family, Carmen expresses a fear that the actions of her abusive girlfriend act to create a poor representation of queer relationships. What is made clear, however, is that queer people are held to a higher standard by nature of being on the peripheral but are in fact people that are not always good.

       As a short story writer, Carmen uses a narrative style of writing in this memoir—utilizing remembered dialogue and imagery to paint a nonfiction story in vivid detail. A favorite chapter of mine is a short story that interrupts the nonfiction retelling with a fiction story of a queen who seeks a companion that she ultimately mistreats despite her desire to cease her loneliness. The whole of the book reads almost as a fiction story but with an added realness of lived experiences that allows readers to connect deeply with the writing.

5⭐️