Relations
Eula Biss
Notes from No Man's Land

The format of this essay seemed to closely parallel the first essay I read by Biss "Time and Distance Overcome." Both began with engrossing stories that transition into her main point in unexpected ways. I didn't expect the custody battle over a child to turn into a race issue that pulled on past feelings of slavery and ownership. I would love to find a overarching topic that can be used to draw force a variety of personal experience and clinching historical events and stories like Biss is able to do. She connects memories of her mother, living in different areas of New York with her cousin, a mixed race women, census's, doll studies, and twins all within this one essay and yet until I wrote that I hadn't noticed how many topics she covered. She moves form one to another so seamlessly it seems like the natural course the thought process would go. She keeps the reader hooked by braiding the topics through each other and beginning the next anecdote before concluding the one she was on.

I drew enjoyment from Biss's unexpected humor. She brought forth a inquisitive and relatable voice. For example she threw in statements such as "there is something moving to me now about the idea of that man, who left Germany in the 1920s, just as the Nazi party was gathering power, laboring at his lathe, perfecting the fancy legs of a maple dining table for a beloved toy known as Black Doll."

Questions:

How does she find stories such as the one of the mother who had biologically unrelated twins?
In her personal stories how much does she rely on emotional truth?