Traceable Relation

"Any traceable relation points to untraceable voices, references and lineages too faint or tenuous to glimpse. Here, it prompts an ardent inquiry into the uses and limits of language, a foundational critique of colonial damage, and a tender appraisal of form. It's no surprise that Chantal Akerman is among the many who inform this book which, like that director’s films, inhabits life in its spatial, sonic, and affective dimensions so we might experience realities in increments, word by word and shadow by shadow. Wielding citation as a loving practice, Kimberly Alidio invites us to reflect with care and rigor on fading and emerging legacies, even - and especially - when losses leave us reeling. Traceable Relation seeks a synthesis of what we inherit and what we claim." - Matt Longabucco, author of M/W: An essay on Jean Eustache's La maman et la putain

"To read Traceable Relation is to enter the space of Kimberly Alidio's writing, where I am drawn through different voicings of grief, longing, and music (or narrative's) "blurred edges around a fact." Like a score interested in the history of sound - like Raven Chacon's - or one that courses through history making several variations on a theme - like Julius Eastman's - Alidio's book explores (and enacts) the past's framing of the present, lineage as a orchestral movement rather than notational device, dictum. I am both moved and changed by the ghosts this book contains, and the way a sentence can become a song, a screen, a record, another trace of utterance and love." - Alexis Almeida, author of Things I Have Made a Fiction, translator of Roberta Iannamico's Many Poems.

"An exquisitely sculpted living-thinking-breathing work. Whenever I put it down I immediately want to pick it back up. Traceable Relation is everything I want to read." - Renee Gladman, author of My Lesbian Novel