Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors' Choice, one of Oprah Magazine's Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. She's the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future- Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis.
Ms., A Most Anticipated Title of the Year
The Stranger, A Must Read Book of Fall
"Sycamore creates a mosaic of art and humanity, flaws and all."
—Sarah Neilson, The Seattle Times
"Unapologetic and reflective, Sycamore's memoir invokes the very
nature of art and the mindset of the artist, noting, 'When you
allow your work to express what you see, sometimes your work
expresses more than you know.' Queer artists will find much to
ponder in this outspoken, deeply felt examination of creativity,
family, betrayal, and independent expression."—Jim Piechota, The
Bay Area Reporter
“[Touching the Art] blurs the lines of genre convention and
polyvocality by assembling a multivoiced collage of texture,
feeling, and evidence . . . Sycamore paints with language, using it
as a device to translate her grandmother’s canvases into
multisensory descriptions that branch off into various sites of
memory, analysis, and juxtaposed quotations, modeling how
inseparable art and life are . . . [Touching the Art] asks us to
place our hand and tongue directly on the painting, to know that it
becomes ours through this contact, and that both we and the artwork
will be changed by our touch.” —Sam Sax, The Believer
"[Sycamore] explores the fertile ground of her life with incredible
nuance in prose that reads almost like stream-of-consciousness but
is actually an intricate and deliberate prism of meaning." —Sarah
Neilson, Shondaland
"Sycamore offers readers a brilliant rethinking of the value of art
and the possibility of connection across seemingly intractable
familial divides." —Elizabeth Hall, Full Stop
"Part memoir, part social history, part political analysis, and
part queer theory, Touching the Art tells a compelling and
evocative story." — Eleanor J. Bader, The Indypendent
"Reading Touching the Art, one believes again in the vision of a
life that can be transformed through art. But you have to keep your
eyes wide open." —Peter Valente, Heavy Feather Review
"This hybrid work of biography, social history, and criticism
weaves memoir seamlessly into the mix." —Daniel Allen Cox, The
Brooklyn Rail
"Brilliant." —Lynn Melnick, Lilith Magazine
"There are almost no question marks at the end of Sycamore’s
sentences—the state of wondering is constant . . . she does find
solace in the searching, inviting us to be active creators in
the collage of our being" —Mikhal Weiner, Jewish Book Council
"Frank, intimate reflections on art, life, and their often complex
intersections." —Kirkus Reviews
"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore braids humor, tragedy, and unabashed
presence in every single sentence she writes. With Touching the Art
she blends history, essay, and memoir, telling her own secrets and
truths through the lives of others. I adore Sycamore's writing and
would follow her anywhere. Nobody touches the art like Sycamore."
—Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Biography of X
"In Touching the Art, Sycamore responds to the call for white
artists to reckon with our pasts, our connections to power and
privilege. The scalpel she takes to her own family, both the
education, access, and love of art they gave her, and the intense
and ongoing violence they did to her and cannot face, is brutally
laser sharp. In all the messily queer craftsmanship we've come to
expect from her prose, she offers us a handhold and a way forward:
Touch the art, fuck it up, get free. Art is a part of our
liberation and our future, and Sycamore is trying to write us all
free." —Joseph Osmundson, author of Virology: Essays for the
Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s Touching the Art is ekphrastic,
intimate, historical, and proximate. The art of the title,
paintings by Sycamore’s grandmother Gladys Goldstein, appears only
through description—and what description. We encounter the work,
learn who Gladys was and who she was in relation to—how
gentrification, redlining, and anti-blackness shape space, and how
'family' organizes itself to refuse confrontation and to excise
queerness. Sycamore employs diverging yet deeply related histories.
Touching the Art is an education, a beautiful instruction in
feeling and looking." —Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake: On
Blackness and Being and Ordinary Notes
"I love writers who take risks, who rattle cages, who overthrow the
tables of the money changers, writers who can whisper truths or
shout them fabulously from rooftops. Yes, I love Mattilda." —Rabih
Alameddine, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope
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