Heaven

By Emerson Whitney

Published March 2024

9781739220785 / Paperback / £10.99

Emerson Whitney writes, "Really, I can't explain myself without making a mess." What follows is that mess-electrifying, gorgeous, defiant.

At Heaven's center, Whitney seeks to understand his relationship to his mother and grandmother, those first windows into womanhood and all its consequences. Whitney retraces a roving youth in deeply observant, psychedelic prose-all the while folding in the work of thinkers like Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and C. Riley Snorton-to engage transness and the breathing, morphing nature of selfhood.

An expansive examination of what makes us up, Heaven wonders what role our childhood plays in who we are. Can we escape the discussion of causality? Is the story of our body just ours? With extraordinary emotional force, Whitney sways between theory and memory in order to explore these brazen questions and write this unforgettable book.

Praise for Heaven:
“Heaven delves into deep memory and deep thinking to offer an ‘account of oneself’ that questions, if not upends, the very idea of such a thing at every turn. The result is a poetic, candid, probing reckoning with childhood, the maternal, gender, and the possibilities of theory which will both speak to its time and outlast it.”
—Maggie Nelson, author Bluets and The Argonauts

“Emerson has written a story about Mommy and me but mainly they’re extending to us a forceful act of writing in defense of the self that is taking pictures, running away—eyes full of tears, then pirouetting, and standing their ground to tell us this colossally wonderful and woefully broken story”
—Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls and I Must Be Living Twice

“Heaven goes down like a strong elixir… I can still feel its heat swirling through me.”
—Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me

“Elegantly poetic, beautiful, brutal, and wise… Heaven is a wonder.”
—Michelle Tea, author of Valencia and Modern Tarot

“Someone asked me recently if I ever imagine writing from today that has the strength to remain in print centuries from now. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, and told them about a book by Emerson Whitney called Heaven. Every page is beautifully written, pitch-perfect harrowing, but maybe more important is how it changes many things we thought we understood about life. Hundreds of years from now, readers can better appreciate this time and this nation through Emerson Whitney’s extraordinary lens, where they write, ‘The history of categorization around disability in the United States was always about social control.’”
—CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death

“Whitney achieves what often feels too difficult to do when writing about family—an honesty born not in spite of love, but because of it.”
—The Believer

“Whitney stands as a deft executor of their own unique style … a writer who guides with an intuitive vulnerability and honesty.”
—The Paris Review

“An incisive, nuanced inquiry into gender and body.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Melodic and engagingly written, Heaven will enrapture anyone who loves reading for beauty and intellectual challenge at once.”
—Literary Hub

“Emerson Whitney’s first prose book is a frank and absorbing examination of transness, brokenness, mothering, femininity, embodiment and truth.”
—Ms. Magazine

“(W)hat Heaven does best is capture the disorienting pull of unsettling childhood memories—at once incomplete and terribly weighted.”
—AV Club

Emerson Whitney is the author of the critically acclaimed Heaven which was named a best book by Kirkus, Bomb, the AV Club, PAPER, Literary Hub, Refinery29, and the Chicago Review of Books. Emerson’s work has appeared in the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Magazine, and elsewhere.