Lucy Ives writes with a madcap intellectualism—think David Sedaris with a Ph.D. Her new collection of essays, An Image of My Name Enters America, sutures together such heterogeneous topics as fetal consciousness, unicorns, the medieval mystic Margery Kempe and the end of the world. Much like in Ives’ fiction (Impossible Views of the World), her meticulously crafted prose weaves these disparate threads into beautiful essays that surprise and delight with their interconnecting patterns.
The five essays in this collection are linked by Ives’ experience of pregnancy and childbirth during the COVID-19 pandemic. In “Of Unicorns,” her midwife recounts a dream (or memory?) of being perfectly happy in a smooth enclosed place, perhaps her own mother’s uterus. Ives then pivots to her own childhood obsession with the My Little Pony toys of the 1980s, before turning to Zoroastrianism and the Renaissance unicorn tapestries that hang in New York City’s Cloisters museum. The lines Ives draws between these elements are astonishing and moving, and “Of Unicorns” is one of the best essays I’ve read in a long time.
The titular essay returns to the theme of memory, both individual and cultural. Childhood memories also play a role, but so too does anamnesis—the recollecting of knowledge from before birth—prompting Ives to explore her family’s immigration story, which began with the Assyrian genocide of the 1910s. Although this violent historical event long precedes Ives’ own birth, it “refuse[s] to be forgotten,” and she feels its presence even before she is consciously aware of it. Questions of memory and identity persist across each of the essays grouped in this volume, lending a satisfying sense of cohesion to the collection.
In the final essay, Ives links Cixin Liu’s science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem with the difficulty of finding words to accurately depict childbirth. Is the experience of giving birth, of moving from a pre- to post-natal state, akin to a holy state of nothingness, a place where language fails? The body-in-labor may be the ultimate testing ground for Ives’ thoughts on identity and language.
An Image of My Name Enters America carries its scholarship lightly and with a wink. While each essay is scrupulously footnoted, the notes can be ignored (although interested readers will find further reading suggestions galore). Readers are advised to sit back and enjoy the many splendors of Lucy Ives’ magpie brilliance.
