I've had to think up a way to survive : on trauma, persistence, and Dolly Parton : American Music Series

A moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon. The first time Lynn Melnick listened to a Dolly Parton song in full, she was 14 years old, in the triage room of a Los Angeles hospital, waiting to be admitted to a drug rehab program. Already in her young life as a Jewish teen in the 1980s, she had been the victim of rape, abuse, and trauma, and her path to healing would be long. But in Parton’s words and music, she recognized a fellow survivor. In this powerful, incisive work of social and self-exploration, Melnick blends personal essay with cultural criticism to explore Parton’s dual identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol, identities that reflect the author’s own fraught history with rape culture and the arduous work of reclaiming her voice. Each chapter engages with the artistry and impact of one of Parton’s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, misogyny, creativity, parenting, friendship, sex, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Bold and inventive, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive gives us an accessible and memorable framework for understanding our times and a revelatory account of survival, persistence, and self-discovery. "When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she spent the money from her NYPL fellowship on a trip to Dollywood with her family. Melnick's trauma began long before 2018, but events of that year forced her to relive portions of it--abortions, drug abuse, rape--even as she was confronting new pain in the loss of close friends and family. Dolly Parton's music had been a balm and a source of inspiration for decades, and so the trip to Dollywood was "a personal reckoning with my traumatic, often violent past...the culmination of a difficult year that left me wanting to get to the bottom of just what it is I love and need to say about Dolly." Each chapter of this book explores some aspect of Melnick's life through the lens of one of Parton's songs. Melnick is a mother, wife, daughter, survivor, poet; this manuscript has her examining sex, sex work, religion, jealousy, class, nostalgia, aging, illness, motherhood, addiction, abortion, and art, among other topics that can be illuminated in a discussion and appreciation of Dolly's music and life"-- Provided by publisher