Run Towards the Danger

"In this intimate collection of autobiographical essays, Canadian Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley delves into her past to illuminate powerful truths about post-traumatic memory, our relationship to the body, and how we tell our stories. Each of the literary essays in Run Towards the Danger captures a piece of Sarah's life, as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality as it is constructed in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person you are now but were not then. By turning to her own past, Sarah draws out questions of individual morality and of structural violence that affect and implicate us all. Anyone who's seen her documentary, Stories We Tell, will know the emotionally charged and resonant ways in which Sarah writes and expresses herself, and her aptitude for exploring the very nature of stories, the ambiguity that lies within memories, and the complexity of parental love. The trauma she experienced as a prominent child actor folds into and affects the trauma she experienced at the hand of Jian Ghomeshi, and her reflections on the act of recalling these horrific moments in her own life importantly echo widespread issues around our legal system's understanding of a victim's memory of their assault. From her relationship with her body to her numerous terrifying health crises to her profound heartbreak over her mother's untimely death, these essays are at once crushing, redolent, haunting, and inspiring-each story is a testament to the strength and defiance of the human spirit. Unearthing the intricacies of parenthood, inheritance, and our capacity for human connection, Run Towards the Danger exquisitely captures what it is to live in one's body, in the constant flux of becoming and learning. Woven into this devastating and uplifting story of trauma, love, and survival is a reminder not to succumb to the familiar pain and fear when it threatens to overcome you. When you think you've reached your threshold, when the danger feels close: run towards it."--