Author Description

Like an obsessive baby name book with only one entry, The Book of Benjamin establishes links between identity, birth, and grief. Braiding the story of his stillborn sister with the Biblical account of Benjamin to explore how names and their etymologies might shape our self-understanding, Benjamin Robinson resists the traditional individual focus of the memoir, while also investigating new forms of masculinity. The Book of Benjamin is the testament of both a son and a father, contrasting genealogy with larger communal narratives.