In 'Make It Scream, Make It Burn,' Leslie Jamison Turns The Pen On Herself
In her new book of essays, Leslie Jamison reminds us more than once that the Roman playwright Terence's Latin motto, "I am human: nothing is alien to me" is tattooed along her arm.
The declaration, also the epigraph of The Empathy Exams, Jamison's first essay collection, is a mission statement for this intense writer who is drawn to strange stories that feed "the human hunger for narrative" — but also test the boundaries of her compassion and her openness to "mystery and wonder."
Jamison makesis with "the fantasy of objectivity." Even when reporting on a blue whale whose unusual song becomes a rallying cry for lonely people, or a family invested in the idea that their toddler's nightmares channel his previous life as a pilot shot down by the Japanese in 1945, she investigates her own process and feelings with at least as much rigor as her research into the subjects themselves. Yes, this can lead to a self-involved form of meta-journalism. But the overall result is a heady hybrid of journalism, memoir, and criticism.
