All The Waking Hours (Essays)

A lyric interrogation of life as a bored woman in the twenty-first century, for readers of Jenny Odell and Deborah Levy.

What does it mean to be a human in the late stages of capitalism? How does boredom change as we age, and what moves us from inertia to action? Does being a woman in middle age require magical thinking?

Shifting between autotheory, memoir, and shrewd literary and cultural analysis, acclaimed essayist Erin Wunker wades into the thick of these questions. Memories of unbelonging are given meaning alongside insights about the fashion statements of iconoclastic women artists, while the boredom of childhood summers is held in tension with the contradictory experiences of monotonous caregiving and intense love for one’s child. Using her own experiences as a springboard, Wunker gives voice to the friction between the anxieties and hopes that come with being alive in a hyper-mediated, ever-demanding world.