Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Body Work by Melissa Febos

7 reviews

alsoapples's review

inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence, Drug abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, and Addiction

jjacobi's review against another edition

challenging inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.5

I didn’t always enjoy reading this book, but I don’t think I was supposed to. It was a challenging and insightful read that inspired me to rethink some of my own experiences. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual violence

bdingz's review

emotional informative reflective

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction

Minor: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, and Emotional abuse

bookaholiz's review against another edition

inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

I didn’t know what I expect when I pick up this book but it sure was different from my imagination. Sometimes, these are happy accidents, and this book was one of them.

It was a book on how to write about yourself, but to simplify it that way is diminishing its powerful message. In some way, the book was part memoir, as the author brought her own personal narrative into it to illustrate how she had woven the intricacies of her experience in the process of her craft.

Melissa Febos wrote with a tenacity and intensity that was overwhelming at first, when she dived into her sexual encounters and erotic desires and how one can write about sex. But once I settled into her fervent honesty, she had shown me the underlying purpose of the things she included, the wisdom of someone who had written as a mean to survive. In that I see myself, not at that level but starting to climb those first steps into writing something that makes sense of it all. Whether publication was the goal or not.

If I was familiar with her works prior to reading this, I might have had a less discombobulated start, but I actually have read an essay of her in the book “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” before, and hadn’t realized that until I was in the middle of reading Body Work. The fact that I recognized her writing from a collection I read years ago (and didn’t really remember it that well) really showed how much of an impression her writing had made. Will be looking forward to read her other works, even if the honesty promised by those books scares me.

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Bullying, Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship

courtneyfalling's review

informative reflective fast-paced

3.0

I expected to rate this memoir a lot higher, but it didn't go nearly deep enough nor specific enough into what I expected. There was no mention of writing about illness or disability, for example, which is a huge component of any bodily writing, whether or not 'explicitly' about disability. And I'm perpetually interested in how to (and whether to) ethically write about other people, and this was just so surface level on it compared to what I really thought this could've done. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual violence and Addiction

lowbrowhighart's review

challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault and Sexual violence

Moderate: Sexism, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment, Homophobia, Colonisation, Sexual content, Addiction, and Drug use

dmbooks's review

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Colonisation, Sexual content, and Sexual violence