The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

by Molly McCully Brown

Overview

A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2017

Harrowing poems from a dark corner of American history by the winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry.  

Haunted by the voices of those committed to the notorious Virginia State Colony, epicenter of the American eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century, this evocative debut marks the emergence of a poet of exceptional poise and compassion, who grew up in the shadow of the Colony itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892554782
Publisher:	Persea Books
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Molly McCully Brown received her MFA from the University of Mississippi, and is a graduate of Stanford University and Simon’s Rock of Bard College. She has published poems in Gulf Coast, Image, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere; Her Essay "The Broken Country" from Places I've Taken My Body was pick for the Best American Essays of 2021 publication (HMH Books).

Editorial Reviews

Molly McCully Brown's first book of poems, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, is part history lesson, part séance, part ode to dread. It arrives as if clutching a spray of dead flowers. It is beautiful and devastating…Brown's impulses…are both documentary and poetic. Her book works because her blank verse, with its seemingly unstudied enjambments, is supple yet pared down. This is restrained writing that nonetheless contains all its essential oils. Brown's diction, her bearing on the page, is precise but unfussy. She marshals exacting details…Her psychological pantry is well stocked. If a handful of these poems drift sideways rather than push down the page, they don't lessen this book's achievement.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

★ 02/20/2017
The spirit of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, one of many American eugenics facilities constructed in the early 20th century, looms over Brown’s harrowing debut, winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. Brown lives with cerebral palsy and grew up near the facility, biographical facts that imbue her poems with an unmatched intimacy. She epitomizes the feelings of the colony’s victims with unadorned, concise language. “Imagine you are/ an animal in your/ own throat,” Brown writes. She also considers the perspective of the institution’s employees, conveying both their ignorance and fear: “do the children of God really lose// their eyes in the backs of their heads,/ and swallow their own tongues in church?” Her use of repetition recreates the hypnotic feeling of routine, giving weight to the lines that break the repetition and simulate fleeting moments of lucidity, certainty, and memory. But it’s her rich imagery that stands out most: “That one has a cave for a face/ blank, unlit, and fallen in./ Back wherever she began/ somebody clapped his hands/ and the fire went out./ But, somehow, she continued to burn.” Brown’s humbling and heartbreaking poems restore dignity to lives sacrificed in the name of perfection. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Brown rounds what others compress as she lends depth, historical and personal, to the complex and suppressed identities that physical distress creates. The desire for something to reach out and save, to touch or not be touched by God or by human hands, carries an eerie undercurrent through the text."

Marginalia

"[Molly McCully Brown] makes us feel empathy and respect for those who were deemed unfit for society. Brown not only delves into a shameful chapter of American history; she also finds a way to remind us of the complexity of the human mind. "

Rain Taxi Review of Books

"Molly McCully Brown’s first book of poems, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, is part history lesson, part séance, part ode to dread. It arrives as if clutching a spray of dead flowers. It is beautiful and devastating."

The New York Times

"The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded is art, and purposeful and fantastic art at that... Brown deserves every praise that comes her way – the poetry is incredible, and the history that it reveals as painful as it is necessary to understand."

The Blueshift Journal

"...[a] fierce and lyric debut..."

Oxford American

04/15/2017
Born with cerebral palsy, Brown grew up near the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, a singular set of circumstances that led to this striking first collection. The American eugenics movement originated at the colony, and Brown allowed herself to imagine the horror of being an inmate there by working through several fictional personae. That's a potent enough set-up, but she doesn't let it do her work for her, using effectively pinpointed language to tell her story. "You come back bone-tired and bruised,/ burned dead out and ready to be shut away," she says of those sent out for day labor. And elsewhere: "Imagine you are/ an animal/ in your own throat." VERDICT Brown accomplishes her task admirably, and her work will appeal not just to poetry readers.

Library Journal