LOVE IS A BURNING THING

An essayist and culture writer examines the connections among systemic oppression, suffering, and spiritual development.

A decade before St. Pierre was born, her mother set herself on fire in a suicide attempt. She emerged alive, and during her recovery, a nurse taught her about Transcendental Meditation. This origin story of sorts accumulates layers of complexity and premonition as the author describes her youth, bracketed by both poverty and her mother’s desperate pursuit of faith, primarily in the shadow of California’s Mount Shasta, a significant site for New Age seekers. Without a reliable anchor, St. Pierre spent her life between homes and mythologies, nodding to the theoretical possibility of everything but unable to actually believe anything. Her mother’s “spiritual framing of actual injustice” acted as both tether and release, desensitizing the author to eccentricities that were really symptoms and driving her to bodily vices such as drinking. Trying to make sense of her past, her mother, and her place in her mother’s life in the wake of her death, St. Pierre crafts a vivid, richly textured, harrowing memoir of her bond, both steadfast and delicate, with her mother. At its most basic, this is a story about growing up with a parent who, St. Pierre came to recognize, had a mental illness. However, the author shows humility and compassion with her mother’s story, and she offers contextualizing background research that teases apart compounding, victimizing influences of patriarchy and capitalism that drive single mothers—especially those who do not conform to society’s expectations—to religion, spirituality, or even conspiracy theories to create a sense of safety. Sifting through signal moments in her past, St. Pierre emerges with a treatise for thinking about not only mental illness and family trauma, but also the ability of belief to alternately empower, embattle, and release.

An exhilarating, heart-rending familial portrait.