Gardens of Our Childhoods - Paperback

by John Belk (Author)

The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the stunning debut by John Belk and winner of the Autumn Houe Press Rising Writer Prize, looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in.

Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration.

Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.

Author Biography

John Belk is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Utah University where he also directs the Composition Program. His debut poetry collection, The Gardens of Our Childhoods (Autumn House Press) was featured in Poets & Writers and was selected as one of the "Best New Poetry Books of 2023" by the New York Public Library. His chapbook, The Weathering of Igneous Rockforms in High-Altitude Riparian Environments, is available from Cathexis Northwest.