{"product_id":"exploded-view-essays-on-fatherhood-with-diagrams-9780820352879","title":"Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eExploded View\u003c\/i\u003e \"graphic\" essays play with the conventions of telling a life story and with how illustration and text work together in print. As with a graphic novel, the story is not only in the text but also in how that text interacts with the images that accompany it. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDiagrams were an important part of Dustin Parsons's childhood. Parsons's father was an oilfield mechanic, and in his spare time he was also a woodworker, an automotive mechanic, a welder, and an artist. His shop had countless manuals with \"exploded view\" parts directories that the young Parsons flipped through constantly. Whether rebuilding a transmission, putting together a diesel engine, or assembling a baby cradle, his father had a visual guide to help him. In these essays, Parsons uses the same approach to understanding his father as he navigates the world of raising two young biracial boys. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis memoir distinguishes itself from others in its \"graphic\" elements--the appropriated diagrams, instructions, and \"exploded view\" inventory images--that Parsons has used. They help guide the reader's understanding of the piece, giving them a visual anchor for the story, and add a technical aspect to the lyric essays that they hold. This mixture of the machine-like and the lyrical helps the reader understand the author's world more fully--a world where art comes in the form of a welding torch, where creativity involves finding new ways to use old machines, and where delineating between right-brain and left-brain thinking isn't so easy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDustin Parsons teaches at the University of Mississippi. Awards for his writing include an Ohio Arts Grant and a New York Fine Arts grant for creative nonfiction, an \u003ci\u003eAmerican Literary Review \u003c\/i\u003eprize for fiction, and a \u003ci\u003eLaurel Review \u003c\/i\u003eprize for fiction.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Georgia Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50413502595346,"sku":"9780820352879","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b118dbd2-6d88-4a92-b554-e39de8f13076.jpg?v=1729354513","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/exploded-view-essays-on-fatherhood-with-diagrams-9780820352879","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}