Rough House: A Memoir

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Product Details
Price
$18.95  $17.62
Publisher
Oregon State University Press
Publish Date
Pages
200
Dimensions
6.0 X 9.0 X 0.7 inches | 0.68 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780870710339
BISAC Categories:

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About the Author
Tina Ontiveros is a writing instructor at Columbia Gorge Community College, book buyer at Klindt's Booksellers in The Dalles, and president of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.
Reviews
The title of Tina Ontiveros' new memoir, rough house, says it all, describing both the delight of her clever father and his menacing flip-side. Ontiveros pulls no punches in portraying a hardscrabble childhood in Pacific Northwest logging camps and her desperate love for a darkly complicated man.
-Debra Gwartney, author of I am a Stranger Here Myself

In spite of her struggle, there is something so plucky and honest about this book's narrator, you will be converted to a new view of your own troubles. You will look at your own life through the lens of this book, knowing with Ontiveros that "certain beauties can only be seen in the complication of hardship." This kid's got the goods to survive, and this book's got a big story for you. -Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar
"Tina Ontiveros's rough house describes, with nuance, in lucid and always descriptive, swift prose, the ways poverty shapes family attachments and how the love attachment in particular is more mysterious and agitating then we can fathom. Ontiveros's portrayal of Loyd, the father character, is complex, empathetic, and truthful--emblematic of the way men become debilitated by masculine shame and loneliness. Midway through, the narrator says: 'I'm not sure the vocabulary exists to explain what that felt like.' Ontiveros presents a richly emotional and revelatory vocabulary for family in rural America." --Jay Ponteri, author of LOBE and Wedlocked
"rough house is a deeply realized memoir about family, addiction, violence, molestation, and the ways regular people endure and overcome inter-generational family dysfunction." --Keenan Norris, author of Brother and the Dancer and By the Lemon Tree
"I read rough house in a single sitting, unable to break loose from the tension of what might happen next. It is the story of a childhood gone wrong in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, twisted and tangled, before it is finally set to rights. Reminiscent of Raymond Carver if Carver had given a voice to the women and children faced with the troubles and misdeeds of men. From the myth of a larger-than-life father racked with addiction and rage, to a steady and clear-eyed mother who remained at the center of her childrens' orbiting lives, rough house chronicles a past that haunts a young girl who, like her father, is filled with a legacy of anger, but like her mother, is determined to reshape how her own story will end." --Deborah Reed, author of Pale Morning Light With Violet Swan, owner of Cloud & Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita, Oregon
"rough house is at once a study of a disappearing culture, and an exotic and achingly familiar meditation on family. Amidst an unforgettable world of sawdust and grime, snarling chainsaws and privation, Ontiveros is as vivid in her in description as she is unflinching in her honesty." --Jonathan Evison, author of Lawn Boy and West of Here