Madder: A Memoir in Weeds

“A weed is of no use to one who has no use for it... I will burn up this uselessness to tell a story,” writes Wilkinson, a horticulturist and editor, in his idiosyncratic debut. A sort of reckoning with common weeds—a subject the author is well versed in from his training at Brooklyn Botanic Garden—Wilkinson’s memoir looks at the entangled stories of his upbringing, lineage, and sexuality. He wrestles with his identity as the only son of a single mother and hardworking Uruguayan immigrant and charts how, after growing up in the shadow of his absent father—who left Wilkinson’s mother not long after he was born—he established his independence as a gay man eager to carve his own path. Many chapters retread the same ground, as he navigates his complicated past, his fraught relationship with his mother, and his need for “some portion of stability” like the burdock root whose “taproot runs deep and thick into the clinching earth.” In describing his mother’s fury and neglect, he invokes the “shepherd’s purse’s bitter juice... effective in the binding up of all wounds.” Despite its sometimes repetitive feel, Wilkinson’s narrative shines in the lines of verse interspersed throughout (“how could she/ask me to father/into this world the next?”). This will intrigue patient readers who appreciate a flair for the poetic. (Oct.)