Back Talk: Teaching Lost Selves to Speak [Hardcover]

Joan Weimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0788156578 | ISBN-13: 978-0788156571

When you have always defined yourself by the things you do & suddenly you can t do them anymore, who are you? Joan Weimer wrestles with this unsettling question in Back Talk, her moving, funny, fiercely honest account of a year of loss & recovery. A wise & powerful book by a brave & spirited woman, Back Talk links autobiography & biography in an original & compelling way. Searing, powerful, ruthlessly honest. Two journeys intertwine here: the author s recovery from her own disability & her restoration of a forgotten writer, Constance Fenimore Woolson, to her place in American literary history. A book I couldn t put down.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Due to a herniated disc, Weimer, a professor of English at Drew University, was told that she must take a year's leave from teaching to be encased in a restrictive back brace. In this powerful memoir, she describes the contrast between her usually hectic life and enforced inactivity--which eventually provided her with the leisure to examine how overscheduling has excused her from self-knowledge. Although unable to continue writing a scholarly study of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a 19th-century novelist, she finds herself sympathizing with the spiritual aspects of Woolson's life that Weimer, an agnostic, had before rejected. Her desire to better understand Woolson's suicide results in an inward journey that takes Weimer back to her own childhood and yields insights into her relationships with her husband and grown children. Ultimately, Weimer turns a year of pain and fear into an opportunity for growth.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Weimer led an active life-teaching English at Drew University, writing, participating in political causes, and enjoying her family-until a debilitating back injury forced her to have surgery and then to spend eight hours a day strapped to an electronic stimulator while she waited for her vertebrae to fuse. This year of pain and limited mobility provided time to immerse herself in the life and work of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a forgotten 19th-century writer (see Women Artists, Women Exiles, Rutgers Univ. Pr., 1988, which Weimer edited). As she read Woolson, Weimer reflected on her own troubled relationships with her parents and her children and gradually gained insights and spiritual comfort. Here, she has skillfully woven strands of Woolson's life together with her own past and present to construct a compelling memoir. Readers will empathize with her disability and admire her courage and energy while feeling personally each triumph and setback. Highly recommended.
Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Floris Books (June 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0788156578
• ISBN-13: 978-0788156571
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,613,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A candid and highly intelligent account of personal growth, May 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Back Talk: Teaching Lost Selves to Speak (Paperback)

This memoir recounts the personal evolution of a highly accomplished professor of literature forced to confront a debilitating health crisis involving her back. As a result she questions the path she has taken in life, examining with relentless candor her own past. At the same time, her obsession with a nineteenth century literary figure, Constance Fenimore Woolson, leads her on an unpredictable and surprising course of speculation on matters of spirituality, feminism, and personal psychology. The author's intelligence, humor, determination, and sheer literary skill take this memoir well beyond the usual inspirational new age stuff, and the result is a fine meditation on the coming together of many forces that refocus and redefine her sense of self.