RAISING WRENNS

Corbin offers a harrowing account of growing up in a fractured family in a working-class Massachusetts neighborhood.

Throughout this memoir, the author draws comparisons between her family, the Wrenns, and the similarly named, “scrappy little birds renowned for the way they flitter from place to place, building shallow rooted nests wherever they land.” Her family, she says, “never flew farther” than the Main South neighborhood of Worcester, Massachusetts, where “people didn’t fuss with ambition.” After her younger brother David’s suicide in 2018, Corbin decided to write this book to delve into her past; in it, she writes of an early childhood marked by parental neglect and abuse. Organized into roughly chronological sections that often focus on specific family members, Corbin’s account begins in 1980, when she was 6 years old; she tells of having to leave her home to forage for food in the local park after her parents temporarily abandoned her and her siblings. Shortly thereafter, her younger sister, Lisa, was adopted by an aunt, while the author and David were returned to their parents, whose subsequent fights she compares to those of professional wrestlers. Following her parents’ divorce, her mother’s drug use intensified—“something is angrier about the drugs she’s using now”—and she disappeared again, this time for several months; during that time, the author tells of abuse by a boyfriend. The memoir’s few moments of lightness, such as an account of the author’s tender relationship with her best friend, and their plan to escape from their present circumstances together, are complicated and tinged with loss. The memoir’s use of Massachusetts dialect (hawse, trahp) has an authenticity that vividly captures the essence of her environment. Overall, it’s a raw look at the realities of growing up in poverty and instability, and its unflinching style is complemented by poetic interstitials comparing each family member to specific characteristics of wrens. Although the story is very personal, it also touches on broader systemic issues affecting families in similar socio-economic conditions.

A poignant and resonant memoir of loss.