An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives

We are an image, Lucy Ives writes in her collection of essays, An Image of My Name Enters America. This is what our sensations and our comprehension of our body’s liveliness in each moment ultimately amount to. It is lucid, trembling. A bright point of perception in the infinity of unseeing space. While each of Ives’s five essays are distinct—approaching ideas of belief, romance, fundamentalism, mental health, and childbirth, as well as the cultural phenomena of subjects like unicorns and Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem—each remains rooted in exploring how the cultures and societies we grow up in, live in, and learn in shape us. Vulnerable and intimate, An Image of My Name Enters America reveals how we become—oftentimes unknowingly—a reflective image of the dominant forces around us.

Ives’s integration of research with her own personal narrative is seamless, but it was the personal moments that stood out to me the most—the invitation she offers to readers to step into her brilliant, although at times complicated, mind. The moments she shares about her own life are poignant and confidential: a childhood belief in a magical portal with the power to transport a person to another realm, a place where There would be a purpose to my living; an obsession with vividness during her freshman year in college, where she became briefly locked into what I might describe as unknowing self-voyeurism; her conclusion that, when faced with a choice between love and memory, I choose memory; her struggle with mental instability and illness, where at one point she comes to see how everything I encountered was composed of my attempt to differentiate it from myself—and thereby control it; and her experience giving birth to her son, wherein There was the life in the body that grew within me, and there was the body of the movement of labor, and there was my tiny actual body, somewhere.

Each essay focuses on a certain period of time in Ives’s life, moments where her self-conceptions and beliefs are solidified or challenged. Yet while rooted in the author’s own experiences, the depth of this collection’s exploration reaches beyond the personal and carries a universal relevance. Ives’s writing asks: Why and for what purpose do human societies perpetuate beliefs? From where does fundamentalism and the capacity for cruelty and violence arise, and how do we carry painful memories? How do gendered and problematic conceptions of romance and “true love” take root? What does apocalypse mean and look like, both in the world and in our own lives? How do we walk the line between birth and death, facing the fear that accompanies this inevitable dichotomy? The answers Ives provides are meandering and open to a self-reflective interpretation. She offers her understanding of the research she brings forth, reaching far back into the annals of history and forward into our contemporary moment to show the persistence of ideas and beliefs across time. But at the end the conclusions she draws are rooted in her own perspective, leaving the door ajar for readers to reach their own understanding.

For me, though, the true brilliance of this collection lies in its relevance to our world at this moment in time. As fundamentalism and polarization calcify identities and beliefs around the world, as mental health crises continue to rise, as an obsession with love and romance grows (noticeable in an abundance of new dating reality TV shows and online dating apps), and the fear of a dystopian future threatens, Ives questions the origins of these powerful forces. And in doing so she is asking us to question them as well. Like an expert guide, her prodding is subtle. Never once in reading her essays did I feel obligated to agree with Ives, despite how persuasive her writing is. In part this is because the examples she elucidates speak for themselves. From lore and mythology to philosophical thought throughout history to My Little Pony, Disney princesses, and the messiness of womanhood and pregnancy, Ives dives deep into the cultural moment we all find ourselves in. The journey from past to present is laid bare for us to dissect and judge.

Everything I encountered was composed of my attempt to differentiate it from myself—and thereby control it

At one point Ives writes …the image that affects you most may be the one…in shadow. The vivacity or strange, muffled darkness of that which lies under erasure—buried, crossed out, immolated, bathed (paradoxically) in too much light—should never be underestimated. In other words, it’s the things we’ve hidden away, the ideas and beliefs we’ve learned and lived by but try to ignore, that are the ones wielding the most power. Shine a light on them, Ives proposes. Challenge these ideas and see them for what they are. It won’t be easy. It might even be terrifying: It’s the voice that says, I am trying something out. I’m praying. The realization that one is human, and, meanwhile, that this means all bets are off. It’s staggering: anything can happen—but is this what petrifies me? Ives suggests that it is only by wading into uncertainty that we become free to create a better future—for ourselves, and for the world we inhabit.            

It is no surprise to me that Lucy Ives declares, language…is my great philosophical love, for each page of An Image of My Name Enters America is beautifully written. Her words are compelling and potent, forming an urgent and transformational call not to accept the status quo but to challenge it, to confront the images and shadows we accept in our lives and in our society. Timeless in its exploration of humanity, and timely in the moment of its release—a world on fire politically, socially, and climatically at the end of 2024—An Image of My Name Enters America is a must-read for anyone seeking answers and insight into a world that increasingly makes little sense. In the hands of Lucy Ives, the power and fallibility of these ideas and beliefs are laid bare, as is our ability to rise above them.

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Justine Payton is a writer and editor based out of Leland, NC, and her writing can be found in Bellevue Literary Review, Terrain.org, Isele Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a memoir, as well as a collection of essays on the nature of resilience.