Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays

From Farinelli, the eighteenth century castrato who brought down opera houses with his high C, to the recording of "Johnny B. Goode" affixed to the Voyager spacecraft, *Let Me Clear My Throat* dissects the whys and hows of popular voices, making them hum with significance and emotion. There are murders of punk rock crows, impressionists, and rebel yells; Howard Dean's "BYAH!" and Marlon Brando's "Stella!" and a stock film yawp that has made cameos in movies from *A Star is Born* to *Spaceballs*. The voice is thought's incarnating instrument and Elena Passarello's essays are a riotous deconstruction of the ways the sounds we make both express and shape who we are—the annotated soundtrack of us giving voice to ourselves. **Elena Passarello** is an actor and writer originally from Charleston, South Carolina. She studied nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Iowa, and her essays have appeared in *Creative Nonfiction*, *Gulf Coast*, Slate, *Iowa Review*, *The Normal School*, *Literary Bird Journal*, *Ninth Letter*, and in the music writing anthology *Pop Till the World Falls Apart*. She has performed in several regional theaters in the East and Midwest, originating roles in the premieres of Christopher Durang's *Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge* and David Turkel's *Wild Signs* and *Holler*. In 2011 she became the first woman winner of the annual Stella Screaming Contest in New Orleans.