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A review by zinelib
What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna
5.0
This is everything I've been waiting for in a perimenopause book. The key element is the "I" voice. The author is an expert in their own experience who has also done their research in what the menopausal transition might be like for others. They are also honest about what a reader may expect. They touch on what perimenopause might be like for people experiencing medical menopause, e.g., cancer survivors, as well as people assigned male or female at birth but have transitioned to another gender via hormones or surgery. However, they alert the reader that they won't feel as seen in What Fresh Hell Is This as they may in book written specifically for their own population. And yet they attempt to touch on the issues and experiences of people going through a different kind of menopause. They are clear, too, that everyone's menopause is different.
Corinna is a GenXer who writes with a gentle authority--again, using a first person narrative or by interviewing people holding other facial, ethnic, and gender identities from theirs, as well as people with disabilities of which Corinna is one. Their expertise doesn't have the ring of "I Am The Expert" that other medical and medical adjacent books I've read do.
I've also read more casual books, comics, and zines that deal with perimenopause. While they can be a lot of fun, none of them has provided the symptom by symptom rundown that Corinna does. It is reassuring, or maybe preassuring for people earlier in the meno that periods are likely to get closer together before they get farther apart. You might have flooding periods. They're normally--but here's how to recognize when they're not. I wish I'd had WFHIT five years ago. I also wish partners and family members and anyone who lives with people going through The Change would read the book. My cohabitant is going to!
Corinna is a GenXer who writes with a gentle authority--again, using a first person narrative or by interviewing people holding other facial, ethnic, and gender identities from theirs, as well as people with disabilities of which Corinna is one. Their expertise doesn't have the ring of "I Am The Expert" that other medical and medical adjacent books I've read do.
I've also read more casual books, comics, and zines that deal with perimenopause. While they can be a lot of fun, none of them has provided the symptom by symptom rundown that Corinna does. It is reassuring, or maybe preassuring for people earlier in the meno that periods are likely to get closer together before they get farther apart. You might have flooding periods. They're normally--but here's how to recognize when they're not. I wish I'd had WFHIT five years ago. I also wish partners and family members and anyone who lives with people going through The Change would read the book. My cohabitant is going to!