Beginning with the promptings of the transgressively erotic title story, the hybrid format of this book is mix of short stories, essays and interviews. How did these sundry positions
connect together? What aspects of both conscious intention and unconscious, interior motivations did they reveal? The stories, none more than a few pages long, can be read at several levels.
The mentor who teaches the child gymnast a contortionist’s erotic positions, the adoptive mother who shoots down ex-partner and adopted child when the former debauches the latter as the
subject of pornographic photographs; the relationship between tattooist and the woman who offers her naked body for decoration are all sharply and persuasively realized as short fiction. The
essays deal with the experiences of maternal separation, family histories and mythologies, the inspiration of the writing lives of Jamaicans Claude McKay and Roger Mais and how 9/11 showed
her how deeply she had become a New Yorker. The interviews, which investigate sometimes her writing, sometimes her art, and occasionally both, provide context for the stories and the essays.
