“‘Laughing with a Mouth of Blood’

“‘Laughing with a Mouth of Blood’: St. Vincent’s Gothic Grotesque” explores Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent, 1982–) recovery and appropriation of monstrous figures using conventions of the Gothic and the grotesque. Clark does so, according to Truffin’s argument, in order to reject received identities and maintain the freedom to create and recreate the self, part of which includes the right to affirm a non-binary gender identity. But at the same time, Clark’s lyrics also express anxiety, often through dark humor, about the isolation and potential destruction of this constructed self. Ultimately, following the figure of the monstrous, the Gothic, and the grotesque across Clark’s entire creative output, Truffin argues that Clark embraces the monstrous self to evade the objectification involved in embracing a “normal” female identity.