The Pink Institution

By Selah Saterstrom

Book Overview

Beautiful and violent, spare and ominous, this wholly original novel explodes mythologies of Southern femininity.

In a multigenerational family saga that captures the rich beauty and passionate despair of the land and its inhabitants, The Pink Institution is a riveting, visceral novel written in a style that elegantly unites poetic prose with historic photographs and texts. It is also a testament to the legacy that war, violence, abuse, and poverty have wrought upon the Deep South. As we follow four generations of determined and relentless Mississippi women from their run-down, post-Civil War plantations to their modern-day trailer parks, the impoverished decay of the Deep South expresses itself through their bloodlines in a haunting reenactment of the past.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566891558
• ISBN13: 9781566891554
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.9" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

This is not your typical fiction or even non-fiction book. I understand this book to be loosely autobiographical, which makes it even more fascinating. I read this book in two hours -- I could not put it down. I have since read it two more times and will read it again, as there is so much to grasp. It is painful, gripping, strange, and beautiful.

This book will change you.

Simply a stunning object of literature and art. The layout of the book underscores its existence as an art object as well as a slice of devastatingly important historical literature. I picked it up and did not put it down, literally, until I had finished the final page. I loaned it to friends and they had the same experience. This book takes its place among the breaths of writing that change all who interact with it. This is a book to be loved.