In the Dream House is a thrilling, harrowing exploration of queer identity, abuse, and storytelling.
Its author tells EW how she pulled it off.
She admitted it was a particularly difficult experience.
Credit: Art Strieber/AUGUST
Yall, this book almost killed me dead, but I did it, she tweeted.
In the Dream Housemarks Machados debut nonfiction book, a memoir she comfortably calls experimental.
It tackles the rarely explored, oft-misunderstood, and deeply painful topic of queer domestic violence.
Graywolf Press
EWs Leah Greenblattcalls ita gorgeously kaleidoscopic feat not just of literature but of pure, uncut humanity.
Heres how she wrote the best memoir of the year, which is now available for purchase.
I was thinking a lot about narratives.
I had a friend sort of say to me, Maybe what you experienced was abuse.
I was like, I would not have described it that way.
Like, it just wouldnt have occurred to me to say that.
Well, Ive only written two books now.
[Laughs] But the first one: I sold it, it was basically done.
I had some edits I had to do but nothing big.
This book I sold a very, very early draft of.
There were a lot of firsts for this book.
I sold a very early draft of it last winter, in early 2017.
It wasnt the right time.
They were both residencies Id already scheduled.
I was like, Cool, finish the book.
As to schedule: Theres no real schedule.
Im not a scheduled writer.
Just as things move me I do them which of course, is hard if youre on a deadline!
But they werent a memoir or even a laypersons breakdown of any of it.
I was just like, Wow, thats so weird, theres this weird gap in the world.
Obviously I was wrong, and thank goodness.
But I remember having that thought.
Then theres this pressure to not talk about queer domestic violence.
Then at some point publishers were like, Do you have another book you want to show us?
And I was like, Weirdly I do.
It occurred to me: I basically have a draft of this thing.
It was odd because the version I sold them was very skeletal.
Ive added a lot of material.
I hadnt even written a full-length book before where it was all one thing.
We as a culture think about a big man beating up a tiny woman, and theyre usually white.
Thats the perpetrator, thats the victim.
Thats what it looked like.
They really struggle to shove all these things that happened in real life into this box that they understand.
Even the conversation on domestic abuse is relatively recent.
They only identified it starting in the 70s as a thing.
About the history of the representations, especially, of queer domestic violence, culturally.
I did not write that book.
For me, its the thing I wanted to do in the beginning.
That was my initial goal.
The Structure
I love nonfiction that pushes formal boundaries.
Im using these narrative ideas…. [Laughs] Its just how my brain works.
Its how I process stuff.
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