Author(s): Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Poetry

Autobiography of a Marguerite is an innovative autobiography about illness, family dysfunction, and identity, and how they can shape one another. The narrator struggles with the effects of her auto-immune illness, and struggles to separate herself from her troubled mother.

The narrative that emerges from the connected prose poems is both revealing and mysterious. Fragmentation, non-linearity and the use of footnotes reflect the disruptive nature of illness and the nature of recalling memories and family patterns.