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ameliasbooks's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Very raw, honest and insightful essays. Not in a linear structure and sometimes a bit too repetitive. Reads like a collection of pieces that have been published in other publications before.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, and Medical content
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Grief, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicidal thoughts
britreads's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
The personal essays in here touched on grief, loss, the complexity of faith, disability and so many other topics. Some essays really stood out to me such as 'The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded', 'Fragments, Never Sent' and 'The Cost of Certainty'. I was deeply moved by the moments where she talked about her twin sister who died right after they were born. I think the ending of 'Fragments, Never Sent' was so moving.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism and Medical content
Minor: Child death and Religious bigotry
courtneyfalling's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
This essay collection made me cry out of catharsis, identification, and sheer reflective beauty, multiple times. I tried to track best essays and ended up feeling like every essay was golden and could be my absolute favorite on reread, but right now I have "What We Are," "Narrative and Need," "The Broken Country: On Disability and Desire," "Public Anatomy," "Fragments, Never Sent," and "Frankenstein Abroad" noted. It might be more accurate to track which themes resonated most: early grief and loneliness, internalized ableism and early-twenties vulnerability and confusion, anger vs. sensitive love, progressive disability experiences and fear but hope for aging. I'm hoping to buy a copy of this to own, highlight, and reread because I am just so filled with love for it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Grief, and Child death
Moderate: Religious bigotry
hilaryreadsbooks's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
(cw: ableism, eugenics, medical violence)
This book asked to be held, to be loved, to be placed close to the heart of any disabled person who has mourned changes in their body.
Molly McCully Brown, disabled poet, writes in this set of essays on loss, grief, and discoveries of new margins: "[m]y first body...exists only before my memory...I wake into the world at the moment of its refashioning." Becoming disabled (and becoming more disabled), we sometimes forget when speaking about the disability experience, is a violent process (and sometimes a continuous process) for some, a sudden shift from one body into the next. Falling asleep in one body only to wake up in another. Adjusting to one body—loving it, even—only to lose that sense of familiarity, of knowing. And then to begin that journey of reknowing, without choosing it, or never really accepting what you have to reknow.
In BODYMINDS REIMAGINED, Sami Schalk speaks about the complexities of "disability pride": we don't usually think of pride as making space to both grieve and love who you are, who you have become. For Brown, the constant changes to her body, both from surgery and the degenerative nature of her disability, means that "[t]he tectonic plates of who [she is] are always shifting." I think that sometimes disabled folks are silenced in their grief, individualized, because of the front we have to put on, to make sure we have our best face on for abled people. There's that constant worry that if we talk about the pain or the loss, it'll somehow confirm the worst kinds of ableist stereotypes that they use to label us.
But at this horizon, in Brown's new world, we are courageously invited into this space of vulnerable grief. We are also offered a chance at discovery, of knowing ourselves anew. A complex rebirth. And in these ways, Brown's book held me, loved me, stayed close to my heart—reminded me of the ways my grief are valid.
This book asked to be held, to be loved, to be placed close to the heart of any disabled person who has mourned changes in their body.
Molly McCully Brown, disabled poet, writes in this set of essays on loss, grief, and discoveries of new margins: "[m]y first body...exists only before my memory...I wake into the world at the moment of its refashioning." Becoming disabled (and becoming more disabled), we sometimes forget when speaking about the disability experience, is a violent process (and sometimes a continuous process) for some, a sudden shift from one body into the next. Falling asleep in one body only to wake up in another. Adjusting to one body—loving it, even—only to lose that sense of familiarity, of knowing. And then to begin that journey of reknowing, without choosing it, or never really accepting what you have to reknow.
In BODYMINDS REIMAGINED, Sami Schalk speaks about the complexities of "disability pride": we don't usually think of pride as making space to both grieve and love who you are, who you have become. For Brown, the constant changes to her body, both from surgery and the degenerative nature of her disability, means that "[t]he tectonic plates of who [she is] are always shifting." I think that sometimes disabled folks are silenced in their grief, individualized, because of the front we have to put on, to make sure we have our best face on for abled people. There's that constant worry that if we talk about the pain or the loss, it'll somehow confirm the worst kinds of ableist stereotypes that they use to label us.
But at this horizon, in Brown's new world, we are courageously invited into this space of vulnerable grief. We are also offered a chance at discovery, of knowing ourselves anew. A complex rebirth. And in these ways, Brown's book held me, loved me, stayed close to my heart—reminded me of the ways my grief are valid.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism
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