Animalization

Animalization is a creative nonfiction manuscript comprised of essays which are able to stand on their own, yet gain complexity as they inform one another. Each essay epitomizes the narrator’s attempt to reconcile with emotional instability, self-destructive behaviors, dangerous relationships, the ethics of who has to suffer, and a masochistic brain disorder. This manuscript follows its narrator’s young life as she attempts to understand herself through lived experience, as well as the lives of some extroadinary family members. The narrator’s lifelong fascination with animals supports her desire to understand pain as an applied ethical consideration and an enactment.