When the eye doctor clicks back and forth between lenses and asks, “Is this better or worse or the same?” I am never sure which view is accurate. The longer it goes on, the less confident I become. How blurry is blurry? Is sort of fuzzy better than kind of fuzzy? Do I see what I think I am seeing? Am I being tricked to expose inconsistent choices?
In the end, despite doubt and uncertainty during the process, I see more clearly.
And so it goes with Terena Elizabeth Bell’s innovative new work of fiction, “Tell Me What You See.”
Using words, images, snippets of emails, social media and other visual and typographical effects, these ten unique stories compel readers to examine what they think they know about the January 6th invasion of the U.S. Capitol, early corona quarantines in NY, climate change, and other current events from the past two years.
“The Atticus Review” compares the stories to “a stampede of wild horses,” claiming “it doesn’t care about your attempts to tame it,” but I disagree. Bell is not unleashing wild creatures as much as she is directing our attention to important topics.
In one of the most compelling stories, “Regression,” the reader becomes the patient as Bell uses erasure to portray the progress of Alzheimer’s Disease. Part I is a coherent 100-word revelation by a speaker who insists, “I’ve done everything right,” with references to eating leafy greens and learning something new every day.
Despite healthy self-care, the voice admits “it” had affected their mother and aunt, but “As long as I was young, there was still a chance.”
In the end of that section of “Regression,” the verdict is clear: “They say I won’t lose my memories, just my ability to retrieve them.”
Part II of the piece describes “Mild Cognitive Impairment” using the same structure as Part I, but with some of the words missing, as if they have been erased from the original text. The white space between words gives pause to the reader. Like viewing ancient statuary that is missing vital physical details, somehow the whole emerges without all its parts.
More erasures follow until the heartbreaking end stage. What began as about a hundred words is reduced to three. “I’m still…” floats on the remaining white space until “here” lands at the bottom, where it is end-stopped by a period.
Bell, a native of Sinking Fork in Christian County, Ky., has lived in New York for years, but some of her writing reveals Kentucky connections. #CORONALIFE, the longest story in the collection, uses various social media texts, videos, and links to tell the story of Maggie, a Kentucky native living in New York during the pandemic.
Maggie’s mother urges her to come home. Tweets from a random high school acquaintance expose the kind of voyeurism that slows traffic on both sides of a highway after a terrible accident. Reactions and replies from various media sources feature pandemic personalities like Dr. Anthony Fauci, New York Governor Cuomo, and Kentucky’s own Andy Beshear.
Rural vs. urban, north vs. south, and whether to wear a mask or not are some of the themes that play out.
Toward the end, patience fails, hecklers are blocked, and the last Tweet features a picture of Andy Beshear donning a mask embroidered with one word: Kentucky.
In the title tale, “Tell Me What You See,” the text is embellished with images associated with equipment used in eye exams. The young patient, Lily, observes bold letters of various sizes. Her reading of the chart stuns the doctor and drains the color from his assistant’s face. The story ends with a stark image of insurrection, no words.
Curious about how the story transports readers from the big E at the top of the eye chart to political conflagration? Pick up a copy of Terena Elizabeth Bell’s TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE.
Turn to the very last page for a description of the publisher’s philosophy. Whisk(e)y Tit works “with authors who are unwilling to sacrifice intellectual rigor, unrelenting playfulness, and visual beauty” that leads to “texts that would otherwise be abandoned in today’s largely homogenized literary landscape.”
Terena Elizabeth Bell has written for more than 100 publications, including in The Atlantic, Playboy, Yale Review, and other publications throughout the US, UK, Ireland, and Spain. She has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Kentucky’s Governor School for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. The title story “Tell Me What You See” is a 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) City Artist Corps winner.
