Tracy Dimond's debut collection, EMOTION INDUSTRY, leverages pop culture obsession, communication theory, and humor to interrogate the absurdity of controlling feminine rage while living with an undiagnosed chronic illness.
"Tracy Dimond's poems come from the place where 'it girl' and riot grrrl meet. They are smart, introspective, funny, and unsettling all at once-both wry observations and wails into the mic from a brilliant feminist voice that takes poetry, pop culture, and affect as seriously as they deserve to be taken." - Dr. Tonee Mae Moll, author of You Cannot Save Here and Out of Step: A Memoir, winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize
"It's the sarcastic micro-feminisms and anti-capitalist jabs for me. While reading Emotion Industry, I kind of feel like life is work. Except I'm with my favorite co-worker who is edging me to flee - to see beyond the billboards, find a wildflower to sponsor me, the sun of my expanse. There is a level of calm captured in the absolute of suffering, where a recovering animal discovers its cage. I imagine that world would be as precise as the voice in this one. Somehow, Tracy captures the immeasurable heartbreak in apathy and lands it in our body. - Amanda McCormick, Creator of THE HOUSE Handcrafted
"Tracy Dimond takes the reader on a journey through living with undiagnosed illness while trying to survive the world in a woman's body-"so bent over from this leaning in." She hints at the discomfort she feels in her own skin: "thinking about the body- / the reign of terror over every moment captured in / store mirrors" but reminds us "the privilege of / a bag of muscles and bones and fat / with a voice box." Emotion Industry is filled with sharp images and a dry wit that sticks with the reader. Sagely, Dimond tells us, "Aging is deciding which system to buy into, / but I'm still searching for shooting stars." This collection is a shooting star and the one I'm buying into." - CourtneyLeBlanc, author of Her Whole Bright Life, winner of the Jack McCarthyBook Prize