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A lyric interrogation of life as a bored woman in the twenty-first century, for readers of Jenny Odell and Deborah Levy.
What does it mean to be a human in the late stages of capitalism? How does boredom change as we age, and what moves us from inertia to action? Does being a woman in middle age require magical thinking?
Shifting between autotheory, memoir, and shrewd literary and cultural analysis, acclaimed essayist Erin Wunker wades into the thick of these questions. Memories of unbelonging are given meaning alongside insights about the fashion statements of iconoclastic women artists, while the boredom of childhood summers is held in tension with the contradictory experiences of monotonous caregiving and intense love for one’s child. Using her own experiences as a springboard, Wunker gives voice to the friction between the anxieties and hopes that come with being alive in a hyper-mediated, ever-demanding world.
"With her deep sense of history and agile intellect, Erin Wunker has made a book of many riches. Her narrations of early motherhood surprise and amuse in equal measure without compromising the fierce and poetic thinking that is everywhere present in All the Waking Hours. This book meets the challenge of what it means to mother in dark times, proving as expansive as the act of assembling decades of hard-won wisdom in the direction of subtly vivid prose, and in service of vital and ethical hopes."—Canisia Lubrin, author of Code Noir
Erin Wunker's All the Waking Hours drew me in immediately with its soothing voice and tone, bringing me back to the days of early motherhood. What a thoughtful inward and outward meditation on boredom and bother, but one that ultimately transforms into a meditation about time and mortality. These meditations invite the reader to travel along a thoughtful and intelligent mind.—Victoria Chang, author of Obit and With My Back to the World
"A beautifully written, kaleidoscopic book that swirls through boredom’s fertile childhood pleasures, caregiving’s elations/tediums, and a late capitalist mediascape that encourages us to swallow the world, and its suffering, with a yawn. With great sensory attunement and a meticulously observant mind, Erin Wunker has written a very un-boring collection, a gift for wild, anxious, inconsolable readers, and a study in how to meet one’s private and public hours with greater curiosity, communion, and wakeful intention."—Kyo Maclear, author of Unearthing and Birds Art Life
"How do we know if the life we are living is really ours? And how do we show up for the people we love and care for? These are, above all, questions of attention. In stunning and incisive prose, Erin Wunker blends memoir and cultural criticism and philosophy to weave a profound portrait of what it means to notice. With a fierce wisdom, Wunker goes straight at the raw unanswered questions we too often ignore to get on with our days. This book is begging you not to get on with your day, until you’ve mapped your innermost seas. Wunker writes with brio and rigour about not letting yourself off the hook, even in the most mundane moments, especially in the most mundane moments."—Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces
“All at once insightful, devastating, and beautiful, All the Waking Hours is an impressive feat of both observation and intellect. Wunker has thoughtfully created a space to explore some of the more difficult aspects of being a mother, of being a woman, of being alive, and we feel safe in her care. We are all so lucky to have Wunker’s incredible voice, mind, and heart, and her uncanny ability to make connections—a true gem of a collection.”—Stacey May Fowles, author of The Lost Season
Erin Wunker teaches, researches, and writes in Mi’kma’ki where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University. She is the author of Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life (Book*hug, 2016) and The Routledge Introduction to 20th and 21st Century Canadian Poetry (Routledge, 2022). She is also the co-editor of Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader (Coach House, 2020), with Sina Queyras and Geneviéve Robichaud; Public Poetics: Critical Issues in Contemporary Canadian Poetry and Poetics (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015), with Bart Vautour, Travis Mason, and Christl Verduyn; and Refuse: CanLit in Ruins (Book*hug, 2018), with Hannah McGregor and Julie Rak. Wunker lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and now resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia.