Low: Notes on Art & Trash

Author: Jaydra Johnson

Publisher: Fonograf Editions (2024)

Raised in a rural Oregon town plagued by poverty, the artist and writer Jaydra Johnson excelled in school and chased upward mobility, desperate to escape the adversity that she saw as her inheritance—and the certainty that she grew up as trash. Johnson’s powerful memoir, Low—selected by acclaimed writer Maggie Nelson as the winner of Fonograf Editions’ inaugural essay collection contest—tells the redemptive story of an artist who came to embrace her lineage. In the tradition of other outcast artists who have spun refuse into art, the essays in Low reclaim trash as a precious resource and a medium for storytelling.

In this bracing debut, Johnson describes her life and art, including the cut paper collages that punctuate these essays, in vivid detail while offering smart and visceral reflections on a wide range of literary and visual artists who have inspired her, from Shakespeare to contemporary conceptual artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. As Maggie Nelson writes, “Low’s provocations and attestations stayed with me long after I turned its final page. I found myself rooting hard for its narrator—while also realizing that there is no need, as she has clearly found her way, and is now our teacher.”

An indispensable meditation on poverty and art, and a compelling corrective to conventional memoirs about overcoming disadvantage, Low announces the arrival of an important new voice in creative nonfiction.