RaveHumans and NatureThe reasons we fall ill, lose work, get left behind as communities and people and families, are so much bigger than we know, so much more complex and entangled. While that’s terrifying, it also means that we’re not completely alone but rather in this together, and in that knowledge lies a huge amount of power. Arsenault asks us to recognize and access this power in the kindest, most forthcoming, self-aware, and subtle call to action I have read in a long time ... Mill Town traces the history of Arsenault’s family legacy in the small Maine town of Mexico, a mill town on the Androscoggin River, up the coast from the tourist meccas of \'America’s Vacationland.\' Arsenault does a very complex and nuanced thing for an American writer these days. She braids together stories of class, work, and migration for small town Acadian Catholics into a layered story of place, choice, and capitalist control that spans decades and yet feels as intimate as your own blood, your own DNA ... Arsenault writes about class, work, and what it means to leave, recognizing the stubborn, self-defeating behavior of her people as they reject her perspective because she’s left ... The complexities of who gets to tell these stories, who gets to have a voice, lace through Arsenault’s book, layering the personal alongside the very real political and economic pressures that silence people.
