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violetbooklover's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Ableism, Medical content, Sexism, Chronic illness, Child abuse, Sexual violence, Medical trauma, and Sexual assault
foggy_rosamund's review
5.0
I reread this while I had a migraine, and found it so compelling I changed my rating from three stars to five. I found the short pieces moving, and while I was in a place of pain, reading them was very cathartic. This time round, I appreciated Berkowitz's brevity and her clarity.
In 2018 I said:
This is written in the style I think of as "poetry-essays". These pieces, rarely longer than 200 words, sometimes read like short pieces of prose, sometimes more like prose-poetry or sometimes a spoken word piece. This style works very well for Maggie Nelson and is exceptional in the work of Claudia Rankine, but Berkowitz doesn't have the same control as they do. Sections, here, can feel repetitive or badly worded -- but my main criticism is the brevity of this book. Berkowitz raises so many interesting topics, from the sexism inherent in the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, to the history of hysteria in medicine, to the meaning of psychosomatic illness and how we view illness in a capitalist society. I'm fascinated by all of this, but each section was so short that none of these pieces felt adequately explored, and I was left unsatisfied. That being said, I do recommend this book -- there are some extremely strong pieces about medicine and sexism, and some very moving writing about living with fibromyalgia. As I also have this diagnosis, I found these particularly moving, and it's very rare for me to see my lived experienced explored like this.
In 2018 I said:
This is written in the style I think of as "poetry-essays". These pieces, rarely longer than 200 words, sometimes read like short pieces of prose, sometimes more like prose-poetry or sometimes a spoken word piece. This style works very well for Maggie Nelson and is exceptional in the work of Claudia Rankine, but Berkowitz doesn't have the same control as they do. Sections, here, can feel repetitive or badly worded -- but my main criticism is the brevity of this book. Berkowitz raises so many interesting topics, from the sexism inherent in the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, to the history of hysteria in medicine, to the meaning of psychosomatic illness and how we view illness in a capitalist society. I'm fascinated by all of this, but each section was so short that none of these pieces felt adequately explored, and I was left unsatisfied. That being said, I do recommend this book -- there are some extremely strong pieces about medicine and sexism, and some very moving writing about living with fibromyalgia. As I also have this diagnosis, I found these particularly moving, and it's very rare for me to see my lived experienced explored like this.
shomps's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
rinamay's review
challenging
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Chronic illness, Sexual violence, and Medical trauma
mangelini_04's review
2.0
it was decent writing and made you get in a thinking perspective but it wasn’t my type of poetry book, it did however allow me to see a perspective I haven’t experienced before