Apoplexia, Toxic Shock, and Toilet Bowl: Some Notes On Why I Write

by Kate Zambreno

“A girl is a gun. A woman is a bomb”: An essay on writing, madness, rage, and being female, from a relentlessly provocative and brilliant thinker.

Genres: Essays, Feminism, Nonfiction, Writing

16 pages, Pamphlet

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

Kate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial). She is also the author of Heroines (Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents) and Book of Mutter (Semiotexte(e)'s Native Agents). A collection of talks and essays, The Appendix Project, is forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in April 2019, and a collection of stories and other writing, Screen Tests, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in June 2019. She is at work on a novel, Drifts, and a study of Hervé Guibert. She teaches at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zambreno turns herself inside out in this fragmented personal essay. Then she holds a funhouse (madhouse?) mirror up to herself to show us.

[James Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, feeling this.

[Taube · Rating 5 out of 5]

So freakin awesome.