... the fluidity of Kisner’s essays in her debut book, Thin Places, is arguably the most striking thing about this collection. Kisner seems to effortlessly move from research to personal memoir to social commentary—often within a single essay. The topics in Thin Places are wide-ranging, but it’s also as if each essay is stretching its fingers into the next, so there’s a nice congruity throughout the book ... No matter the topic, Kisner’s writing is unflinching, written with a curious and open mind and heart. She’s like a physician, taking the pulse of society, and sharing the results matter-of-factly, without judgment. This debut collection marks Kisner as a voice to listen to.
... fiercely intelligent and consistently edifying ... This idea of duality or 'in-betweenness' is a fascinating and culturally salient concept — and one that ripples through every piece in the book ... What makes this collection so compulsively readable is Kisner’s ability to wield her contagious curiosity and nose for objective reporting to investigate everything from a once bustling, now mostly abandoned lakeside oasis in Southern California, to Ann Hamilton’s magical and enveloping multimedia installation at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012, to evangelical robocalls. But she also looks inward. Her efforts to unpack her relationship with her mother, her Mexican American heritage and her queer identity are some of the most earnest and impactful passages in the book ... remarkably polished and demonstrably articulate ... Kisner is one of the most perceptive, open-minded and capable literary tour guides I’ve encountered in quite some time, and I’m already looking forward to her next (ad)venture.
[The] 'in between state' is the common denominator of this collection, the theme on which the 13 essays are a variation. Certainty, the book suggests, is an illusion. Real life exists in the gaps ... In a new-New-Journalist amalgam of reportage and memoir, Kisner tethers — more elegantly in some pieces than in others — her sociological dispatches to the realm of personal experience: her on-again-off-again relationship with God, her O.C.D., her mixed ethnicity and sexuality. Reading the book, one might picture a series of oppositions — religious/secular, straight/gay, native/foreign, self/other, even living/dead — with Kisner’s focus always on the slash ... Kisner displays an impressive range of narrative modes in this book, bouncing nimbly between gravity...and comic relief, which she peppers in just when our heads are starting to spin. If she sometimes gets lost down rhetorical rabbit holes, at least she makes you want to go with her, pulling the reader along on her journey to excavate the intimate from the observed.
As public definitions of identity relax, are challenged, and at least not in-hiding as a matter of routine, a look at this matrix of fluidity and perception is welcome ... With respect to [Olive] Oatman’s tale, Kisner muses about her own experience with appearing 'vaguely pansexual;' also with searching out tattoos. Given the intensity of Oatman’s life I’m not convinced that Kisner, or any of us, can justify comparing our life with hers, but Kisner lives eyes-wide-open ... Reading Thin Places I was reminded of Oliver Saks’ elucidating essays, which unfold in the maze of existence. Jordan Kisner’s essays from in between also escort us on an informed and elegant journey. See for yourself.
... at once journalistic, philosophical, and personal ... Some of Kisner’s essays are stronger than others. One of the most powerful is 'Habitus' ... ideas are integrated into a wildly layered essay ... 'Backward Miracle,' is just as thoughtful and lyrical as 'Habitus,' but is not nearly as unified or well argued ... Kisner’s essays illustrate that binary oppositions can often turn into meaningful unity. Wherever we see two completely separate worlds, we create true wholeness by breaching the gap.
In her forthright first essay collection, Kisner explores a variety of topics, from adolescence to mental health, relationships, and religion ... Many of Kisner’s works reverberate with the unease of the unknown, blending experiences both visceral and existential ... Written with resilience and candor, Kisner’s essays offer genuine examination of the realities of here and now and life’s universal paradoxes.
Astute, perceptive forays into America’s nooks and crannies ... As a good reporter, the author never judges the people she writes about, often finding common ground with them.
Debut author Kisner explores the religious, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of contemporary U.S. society in a neatly poised, sympathetic, and refreshingly unpreachy collection of 13 essays. With the comforting presence of an open-minded, deeply curious narrator, Kisner attempts to come to grips with some of the stubborn mental habits of modern Americans: an inability to accept death, a penchant for piousness, and a damaging insistence on whiteness as the norm. Her essays...are sharpest when Kisner explores distinctions of inside and outside. Those moments stand out especially when Kisner deconstructs attitudes toward the body ... The prose throughout is by turns lyric and clear, meditative and reportorial—a combination that suits the equal importance she puts on search and on meaning itself. It’s that value proposition that creates the overarching pull of the book, whose essays are as entertaining as they are eye-opening.
