This is my first deeper-drive into the too-neglected Cixous, and I could not be more happy to (re)discover her here, uncomfortably settled into her subcortical reveries into language and self, into a series of unexpected revelations on politics and art, Joyce and childhood, theology and the richness of what lies beneath, suspiciously connecting it all. While “Laugh of the Medusa” may be the most anthologized of her works (and perhaps her most staunch), here one feels that the essays are compelled by her personal questions; and it is where they come up for air that we feel relief and a purchase on understanding.

But Cixous rarely writes these meanings, of course, in summarized expositions. Instead, it is the process of connecting she makes betwixt and beneath, the language in the sub-ether, where we find (along with her, if we are lucky), the experience to take away.

As thick as each of these essays fair (though some are quite readable stylistically), I only wished they could go on further. She left that task to the rest of us.