Blackacre

'Blackacre' is a legal fiction, a hypothetical estate. Monica Youn's fascinating, multifaceted new collection, Blackacre, uses the term to suggest landscape, legacy, what is allotted to each of us - a tract of land, a work of art, a heritage, a body, a destiny. What are the limits of the imagination's ability to transform what is given? On any particular acre, can we plant a garden? Youn brings her lawyerly intelligence and lyric gifts to bear on questions of fertility and barrenness as she attempts to understand her own desire - her own struggle - to conceive a child.