Excavation

Wendy C. Ortiz is an American columnist, writer, poet and psychotherapist, born in 1973. Her memoirs, Excavation, were published in 2014 and recount her sexual relationship with a literature professor fifteen years her senior, which began at the age of thirteen, continued intermittently until she came of age, and profoundly shaped her life thereafter. The narrative is shockingly honest, accusatory between the lines, often harrowing for the reader, but hard to put down. Six years after the publication of the memoirs, on the occasion of the publication of My Dark Vanessa, the author attracted renewed attention by accusing K. E. Russell of plagiarising her book. But we can believe that it is not plagiarism – stories about a relationship between a professor and a student are usually just authentic variations on the same sad theme, the theme of sexual abuse. (VVŠ)