Plums for Months: Memories of a wonder-filled, neurodivergent childhood

by Zaji Cox

Overview

As a neurodivergent child in a hundred-year-old house, Zaji Cox collects grammar books, second-hand toys, and sightings of feral cats. She dances and cartwheels through self-discovery and doubt, guided by her big sister and their devoted single mother. Through short essays that evoke the abundant imagination of childhood, Plums for Months explores the challenges of growing up mixed race and low-income on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942436546
Publisher:	Forest Avenue Press
Publication date:	05/09/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Zaji Cox wrote her first short story at age nine. A dancer, model, artist, and author, she has performed at the PDX Poetry Festival, Survival of the Feminist reading series, Corporeal Writing’s LOOP, and the 50th annual Northwest Folklife Festival. She holds a bachelor's degree in English, and her writing can be found in Pathos Literary Magazine, Entropy magazine, The Portland Metrozine, Cultural Daily, CARE Covid Art REsource, and the anthology 2020: The Year of the Asterisk (University of Hell Press).

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/10/2023

Cox paints a beautiful portrait of growing up in Portland, Ore., as a low-income child with Asperger’s in this one-of-a-kind debut. Growing up in a 110-year-old house where the only heat source was wood-burning stoves, Cox struggled to make sense of increasing sensory overload and a feeling of “worry that is always on overdrive.” She retreated into music and composition notebooks she filled with hundreds of lists; in conversations, she “only talks to new people if a smile isn’t enough and I have a prepared script in my head.” Eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s, she turned to home school, where choosing her own curriculum and being allowed to indulge her numerous fixations sparked her imagination and led her down the path to a career in creative writing. Cox’s dreamlike storytelling and unorthodox structure—some lyrical chapters are mere sentences long, other pages feature only a single, inscrutable photograph—effectively communicate the emotional experience of living in awe of small, quiet moments. This a tour de force, layered with complexities and wonder, that alchemizes Cox’s unique girlhood to something almost divine. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"This a tour de force, layered with complexities and wonder, that alchemizes Cox’s unique girlhood to something almost divine."

—Starred review, Publishers Weekly

"Plums For Months is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, or held, and one which defies every category. It leaves me not knowing what to call it so I’ll just call it MAGIC."

—Jennifer Pastiloff, bestselling author of On Being Human

"Zaji Cox has given the world the profound gift of re-imagining. By rendering reality in fragments, glimpses, lyric reveries and narrative pulses, she has opened up her own experience—with tremendous generosity and compassion—to illuminate how difference is a place of endlessly generative passion. This book is a poetic lovesong as big as the cosmos. This book brings me back to life."

—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust

"While every neurodiverse person is unique, it is in the relatable observations and unique worldview that Zaji Cox's vignettes shine. An amalgamate anthem, Plums for Monthsshows how to seek solitude, coping, and comfort in everyday interactions."

—Joe Biel, author of Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business with Autism

"I fell in love. With every page, more and more. Zaji Cox ’s beautiful memoir, Plums for Months, is an intimate portrait of a girl so smart and so wise and so open about her fears and insecurities that I wanted to wrap my arms around the very pages I was reading. Yes, Cox is acutely aware of the ways she is different. But her earnest struggle and all her obvious strengths are the picture of a hero. This is a story of precise particularity that is also somehow universal. It is a beautiful work of pain and wonder. If you have a beating heart, you can relate."

—Liz Scott, author of This Never Happened

From the Publisher