Words Matter

Friendship, Grief, and Maggie Nelson’s Reckoning with Loss

Authors

  • Christina Crosby Wesleyan University

Abstract

In this essay, I explore how my friendship with the writer Maggie Nelson helped to sustain me in the two years immediately following a catastrophic accident that paralyzed me. In the years since, she has continued to help me reckon with profound loss, as her writing assures me that it is possible to represent both what has been lost and what remains. Odd as it may seem, of her many books, Jane: A Murder is the greatest comfort to me in its stark confrontation with irreparable loss and ongoing grief. Jane was her mother’s sister, killed before Maggie was born.

Author Biography

  • Christina Crosby, Wesleyan University

    Christina Crosby, Professor of English and Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, is the author of A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain (NYU Press 2016), a memoir written in the wake of spinal cord injury, pain and paralysis. She has also written The Ends of History: Victorians and “the Woman Question” (Routledge 1990) and has published essays and reviews in Victorian studies, as well as feminist, queer, and disability studies.

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 32 No. 2 (2019): Feminist Bodies

Section

Main Section

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Crosby, C. (2026). Words Matter: Friendship, Grief, and Maggie Nelson’s Reckoning with Loss. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 32(2), 67-83. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27276