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Sarah Krasnostein Sarah Krasnostein i(11873490 works by)
Born: Established:
c
United States of America (USA),
c
Americas,
;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Home Sarah Krasnostein , 2021 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 80 no. 4 2021;

'The apartment had a strange and abiding habit of swallowing noise. It was on the ground floor of a brownstone on a quiet street in Manhattan, and though it was tiny, and lacked doors, we could not hear each other calling from different rooms. The wi-fi password was ‘city garden’ and I believe that’s really what the owner saw. Not the deep layer of dirt coating the floors that turned our socks black as we took our first steps around the rooms, increasingly confused. Not the dust heaped in every corner, fluffy as fleece. Or the silverfish undulating across bookshelves. Or the cracked toilet or the broken air-conditioner or the sink long leaking water into the warped wood around it. There was a compacted stratum of document files and dog toys and ripped books and heavy silver trays and dead cockroaches and photo albums and tangles of wires jammed tight under every piece of furniture. And a mottled grey stripe running along the wall from bedroom to bathroom, a story about the self and how it is steadied in the night.' (Introduction)

1 y separately published work icon Sarah Krasnostein in Conversation with Chloe Hooper Sarah Krasnostein (interviewer), Melbourne : Readings , 2021 23474247 2021 single work podcast interview

'A conversation between authors Sarah Krasnostein and Chloe Hooper. Together they discuss Krasnostein's latest work, The Believer.' 

1 ‘I Started Dry Retching’: The Harrowing World of a Trauma Cleaner Sarah Krasnostein , Lou Heinrich (interviewer), 2017 single work interview
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 28 September 2017;

'Dorothy’s front door wouldn’t open. So they took it off its hinges.

'[We] were confronted immediately by a wall of garbage, decades upon decades of accumulated detritus,” says Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner. Dorothy’s impenetrable house was in a wealthy suburb, not far from a cafe that made raw almond milk. Krasnostein had arrived there with Sandra Pankhurst, the 63-year-old owner and operator of Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services.' (Introduction)

1 5 y separately published work icon The Trauma Cleaner The Trauma Cleaner : One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay & Disaster Sarah Krasnostein , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2017 11873511 2017 single work biography

'I call my dad from the car and ask him about his morning, tell him about mine.

'‘What kind of hoarder was she?’ he asks.

'‘Books and cats, mainly,’ I tell the man who loves his cats and who I know is now actively considering his extensive book collection.

'‘What’s the difference between a private library and a book hoarder?’ he wonders.

'We are both silent before we laugh and answer in unison: ‘Faeces.’

'But the difference is this phone call. And the others like it I could make—and how strong we are when we are loved.

'Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife…

'But as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less.

'A woman who sleeps among garbage she has not put out for forty years. A man who bled quietly to death in his loungeroom. A woman who lives with rats, random debris and terrified delusion. The still life of a home vacated by accidental overdose.

'Sarah Krasnostein has watched the extraordinary Sandra Pankhurst bring order and care to these, the living and the dead—and the book she has written is equally extraordinary. Not just the compelling story of a fascinating life among lives of desperation, but an affirmation that, as isolated as we may feel, we are all in this together.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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