Ordinary Hazards

Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes is a memoir in verse. A memoir is a narrative about a person’s life told from their perspective. It differs from an autobiography in that an autobiography covers the entire length of a person’s life, while memoirs focus on a specific time in the author’s life. Additionally, chronology and facts are important in an autobiography, while a memoir is more subjective and based on memory rather than objectivity (Dukes, Jessica. “What Is a Memoir?” Celadon Books). The use of verse, or elements of poetry, in memoir writing is not new or uncommon, as the two genres have a number of similarities and complementary features.

A reliance on memory is one of the commonalities between poetry and memoir, according to writer Jill Bialosky. In a piece for the Kenyon Review, Bialosky explores how the architecture of poetry and memoir are similar. She notes how writing poetry is intuitive, such that the “truth or memory in a poem leads to unlocking another” (“An Essay on Poetry and Memoir by Jill Bialosky.” The Kenyon Review). In a memoir, too, the writer focuses on specific memories or moments that hold dramatic significance, and are intuitively, rather than linearly, connected to the next memory explored. In Grimes’s book, for instance, she moves from observations of the increasing discomfort she feels around her stepfather to reflections on what it is to be a Black person in the South. While seemingly disconnected at the surface, both of these experiences significantly shaped the person Grimes grows to be throughout the book, and this is the connective thread between the memories.

Besides the similarities in underlying sensibilities between memoir and poetry, the memoir in verse is also especially suited to both the content and the audience of Grimes’s particular work. In an article for the School Library Journal, writer Caroline Brooks DuBois notes how the novel in poetry form has been growing in popularity among readers since the 1990s (“Tragically Playful: How Verse Novels Lend Levity to the Difficult, a Guest Post by Caroline Brooks DuBois.” Teen Librarian Toolbox). This is particularly true in the case of books that deal with difficult subject matter like trauma or loss, because of the possibilities of the form. Verse offers levity and music, allowing for light and hope to shine through even in a dark story. DuBois opines that “verse, in a sense, ‘tames’ the tragic through […] music, and play” (“Tragically Playful”). Thus, the younger reader is able to better read, process, and sympathize with the tragic, because the heaviness of the subject matter is balanced by its presentation in poetry, rather than prose. Thus, in Grimes’s narrative, the loneliness, despair, and trauma of neglect and abuse is interspersed with the strength she finds in faith, the magic she finds in writing, and the joy she experiences in the fragrance of blooming lilacs.