How Poetry Saved My Life by Amber Dawn; Arsenal Pulp Press, $15.95
Amber Dawn, a former streetwalker, radical feminist, and author of the 2011 Lambda Award winning novel Sub Rosa, digs deep to expose a checkered past in her new confessional memoir How Poetry Saved My Life. The book is creative in the sense that the very first chapter is pure prose bliss, with pages of pungent poetry fronting biographical material that is at times harsh and surprising, yet never monotonous or pandering.
She writes of being one of few women brazen enough to become unrepentantly vocal about her chosen profession in the 1990s, spending her time night-shifting on the stroll in Vancouver, BC. Employing blatant honesty as an "experiment for nearly three weeks," Dawn openly admitted to being a prostitute to anyone who inquired about her livelihood. "I disclosed that I was a sex worker 100% of the time," she writes. "At dinner parties, when new acquaintances asked me what I did for a living, I plainly answered, 'Prostitution.'"
Dawn splits her revealing life story into three sections: Outside, Inside, and Inward. "Outside" intimately details her life out on the streets, a hellion struggling with drugs, identity, self-worth, and "ghetto feminism." "Inside" sweeps the author indoors and offers a much safer perspective. Behind closed doors, Dawn is freer to explore achieving a college education, even as hooking and drugs continue to affect her life. "Cocaine is a great equalizer," she opines on the lure of a powdered high. "It does not distinguish between a street hooker, a college girl, or anyone else for that matter. The rush and burn are the same. I justify a single line – to put this night behind me. A second line – to get me up and out of here. A third. One pain situates itself so close to another pain."
The closing section, "Inward," finds the author getting personal about traveling, escaping, finding love ("to all the butches I loved between 1995 and 2005"), conceding her "feminist-slut badge" to admit a certain shame for her past life, and embracing the internal healing necessary to move forward, onward, and upward.
Early on in the book, Dawn admits that "crisis and creativity can be a potent combination." This slim and powerful autobiography proves this in spades.