Analysis Of This Is A Success Story By Jaimee Wriston Colbert

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There are two lists unfolding in "This is a Success Story" by Jaimee Wriston Colbert, each list informing the other: the list of diseases Monty is obsessing over, and the list of sexual abuse she has suffered since childhood. As she contemplates her illicit relationship with one of her teenage students, she catalogues the multitude of ways death can come about, one disease bringing to mind the next. Aware of the wrongness of what she is about to do, "I’m going to fry for this" (Colbert, 2012) she tells her friend Ginger, Monty still moves inexorably towards self destruction; time and again consciously choosing the wrong path. As her story emerges, we begin to understand the guilt that informs all of Monty's choices, first the child's guilt