I Have Not Loved You With My Whole Heart is a memoir of trauma, healing, faith, and violence. At its center is the author's father,...

I Have Not Loved You With My Whole Heart is a memoir of trauma, healing, faith, and violence. At its center is the author's father, the Rev. Renne Harris, a heavy-handed, alcoholic Episcopal priest who came out in the height of the AIDS crisis and died of HIV in 1995.

In a book rich with remembrances of the Pacific Northwest of the 1970s-1990s, Cris Harris pulls the reader through turning points in a household crowded with abuse, addiction, neglect, acceptance, and grief, as well as the healing that comes after reconciliation. In recognizing perpetrators of violence as complex people--as selves we can recognize--Harris wrestles with paradox: the keening dissonance of loving people with hard edges, the humor of horrible situations, and how humor can cover for anger. He shows how violence can mark us and courageously lays bare those marks, owning them as his own precious history, born of a fierce species of love.

I Have Not Loved You With My Whole Heart will speak to readers whose family members came out late in life, and to those who lost loved ones in the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s. Those with complicated relationships to faith, survivors of abuse, and anyone who has lived with family crisis will also find healing in these pages.

Author: Cris Harris
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
Published: 06/01/2021
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 8.98h x 5.91w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780870711084

About the Author
Cris Harris teaches writing and experiential education at an independent school outside of Cleveland. He grew up in Portland and studied writing at the University of Chicago and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His essays have appeared recently in Post Road, Alice Blue Review, Proximity Magazine, The New Engagement, and Nowhere Magazine, and are forthcoming in the Indiana Review. In 2018, he received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for nonfiction.
crisharris.com