Monica Johnson's Rage, Heal, Root, Grow (2019) is a celebration of the chaos and complexity of life and one person’s process of adapting to it. Johnson’s postpartum years were challenging. She was fearful of what she saw happening—that she was disappearing as her male partner was becoming more visible. She struggled to find the time and space necessary to heal her body, and to reconcile the intense inequity of a child-rearing partnership when one partner (her) was nursing. A unique postpartum tale that refuses the female body as its central character. In its place: that body’s voice, and the bespoke flotsam of daily life.
Rage, Heal, Root, Grow was created on a shared Risograph duplicator over many months while Johnson’s child slept in a stroller nearby. She scanned and printed drawings they had made together with markers, watercolors, crayons, pencils, and lots of stamps into symphonic six-color prints. A narrative text describes her experience of raging, healing, rooting herself, and subsequently growing in a new direction.
