Secretary

About this book

"In Secretary, Cummins deconstructs the life and death-by-suicide of her mother, Dolores Bodkin, an aspiring artist who was forcibly committed in 1963 after attempting to leave her violent and abusive husband. Using language that is factual and at times chilling, the artist plays upon the original meaning of the word secretary--"secret-keeper"--to allude to the secrecy and shame that existed in her household, as well as the cultural silencing of women around the experience of sexualized violence. Cummins uses several layers of information to tell this story: her own memories; excerpts from a diary her mother kept for two years before her suicide; a list of roles that Bodkin embodied, all crossed on her final page; and most dramatic of all--photographs taken by her father that span the period 1956 to 1975."--Prospectus.