black_girl_reading 's review for:

Sick: A Memoir by Porochista Khakpour

2.0

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I think that books about chronic illness and the experiences of women of colour accessing healthcare are essential, but I did not like this book. Here’s the thing. I think that explorations of trauma and illness, of gender and illness, of race and illness, are all so important. I think exploring women’s illness, and illnesses such as Lyme, and calling out how they are often characterized as psychiatric is needed. I think that avoiding narratives of sick then well, of triumph over what is in fact just a stage of life and inevitable outcome of living is good. This book was too much of a hot mess. I think that this was largely due to poor writing and editing. Khakpour was not well when she wrote, and writing was one of the challenges she identified during periods of illness. But where was her editor in all of this? I found this book almost impossible to follow. People did not stand out to me, when exes and friends re-emerged in later chapters, I could not remember who they were. There were no real human connections communicated in this memoir and it made it hard to connect as a reader. Also, I don’t know that organizing chapters by cities made all that much sense. I would have picked years or months or symptoms instead. Also, I didn’t find the writing about romances or addiction or heartbreak or illness to be evocative; I was not transported by her prose. Finally, I think I had a hard time relating to the author, who I found to be kind of enamoured of her own image as the almost heroin-chic waif on trend in the 90’s. Thin, jittery, jumping from rich boyfriend to rich boyfriend, and seemingly expecting to be looked after by everyone in her life. I didn’t understand how she found all of these wealthy people to provide so much to her (money, care, housing, travel, energy), but it was surreal and off-putting to me. An aside: what was the one sentence in brackets at the end of the book about bisexuality? It was so odd, and again, so poorly edited, relationships were explored in detail, so many, and then at the end she was like “there were women too, but I didn’t think I’d mention it but also should mention it.” I didn’t get this book.