Brossard blurs lines between genres in Intimate Journal

Intimate Journal review

Instead of writing creating a self, Brossard insists that 'writing enables one to get outside the self' (8). She shows how language shapes us and not the reverse. We are what we speak as well as what we eat. Language itself--and in its relation with humans--constitutes intimacy. We can’t use language and not be intimate with it, even when the words may not connect with a reader. We have a relationship with words, not with what they refer to. Well known for her non-fiction, poetry, and fiction, Nicole Brossard likes to blur the lines between genres, as she does in this work, a combination of memoir, fiction, poetry, and narrative.