Birth of Uncool

Overview

You are at your most uncool now age spotted, raggedy, not giving a shit, saucy, insouciant, real, crackly and juicy at once. â€â€Âfrom “Crackly and juicy†Birth of the Cool, a compilation album by jazz great Miles Davis, was released in 1957, the year before I was born. That album defined “cool jazzâ€ÂÂ: elegant, distant, hip, and stylish. Davis and his eight comusicians made it all look so easy. From the time I was very young, I was trying to be as cool as Davis’s jazz: aloof, intellectual, desired, mysterious, alluring, and perfect. Only in my fifties did I understand that I had to relinquish this striving and rebirth the uncool parts of meâ€â€Âthose bits that are sentimental, awkward, and vulnerable. This book is an eclectic and uncoolly accessible collection of musings on motherhood, childhood, recovery, faith, and love.

Author Biography

Madeline Walker is a writer and academic writing instructor at the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria. Her first book, TheTrouble with Sauling Around: Conversion in Ethnic American Autobiography,1965-2002, was published in 2011. Her work has also been published in Room, University of Toronto Review, the Journal for Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, and English Studiesin Canada. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her husband and two cats.