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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Illness is often a transformative experience. In What Her Body Thought, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Susan Griffin describes the years of suffering and frustration that marked her battle against an autoimmune fatigue disorder. Her experience comes to resonate in her own mind with the fate of the famous 19th-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for both Dumas's La Dame Aux Camelias and Verdi's La Traviata (and, by extension, the 1937 Garbo classic Camille). Griffin is not the first writer, of course, to tackle the notion of disease as social epiphany--among the most notable are Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient) and Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor). But Griffin is a particularly fearless teacher; she writes passionately about the culture of blame that attaches words like psychosomatic to etiologies it does not fully understand. And as her disease drains personal and financial resources, she discovers how terrifyingly easy it is to become someone whom society overlooks. We have made progress since the 19th century in our understanding of health and medicine, Griffin concludes, but we have failed miserably in our social obligation to extend those benefits to all who suffer and to teach compassion to those who don't. --Patrizia DiLucchio
From Publishers Weekly
"The life of the body is at the heart of my story," declares philosopher, ecologist and feminist theorist Griffin, as she describes her harrowing descent into serious illness. An astute cultural critic, Griffin probes two stories of illnessAher own and the archetypal tale of women and illness Camille (in book, play, opera and film form)Ain an effort to explore the role of illness and healing in society. At the core of Griffin's ruminative narrative is her battle with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS). The disease has left her bedridden, unable to care for her own most basic needs and frightened that she will die alone. Raw with grief over her loss of health and fearful of penury as she becomes unable to work, Griffin has also felt tremendous shame at being betrayed by her bodyA"like a lover seduced and abandoned." She is angry at the way her illness has been minimized by the scientific and medical communities, even by her own friends. Griffin has an exquisite sense of place and a gripping yet lyrical style. However, her constant return to the themes of Camille wears thin by the book's end, and the short prose poems interspersed throughout are distractingAalternately florid and flat. Despite these flaws, the book offers valuable insights into illness and society, elucidating Griffin's theory that "illness itself uncovers hidden reserves of strength." Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
Illness is often a transformative experience. In What Her Body Thought, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Susan Griffin describes the years of suffering and frustration that marked her battle against an autoimmune fatigue disorder. Her experience comes to resonate in her own mind with the fate of the famous 19th-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for both Dumas's La Dame Aux Camelias and Verdi's La Traviata (and, by extension, the 1937 Garbo classic Camille). Griffin is not the first writer, of course, to tackle the notion of disease as social epiphany--among the most notable are Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient) and Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor). But Griffin is a particularly fearless teacher; she writes passionately about the culture of blame that attaches words like psychosomatic to etiologies it does not fully understand. And as her disease drains personal and financial resources, she discovers how terrifyingly easy it is to become someone whom society overlooks. We have made progress since the 19th century in our understanding of health and medicine, Griffin concludes, but we have failed miserably in our social obligation to extend those benefits to all who suffer and to teach compassion to those who don't. --Patrizia DiLucchio
From Publishers Weekly
"The life of the body is at the heart of my story," declares philosopher, ecologist and feminist theorist Griffin, as she describes her harrowing descent into serious illness. An astute cultural critic, Griffin probes two stories of illnessAher own and the archetypal tale of women and illness Camille (in book, play, opera and film form)Ain an effort to explore the role of illness and healing in society. At the core of Griffin's ruminative narrative is her battle with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS). The disease has left her bedridden, unable to care for her own most basic needs and frightened that she will die alone. Raw with grief over her loss of health and fearful of penury as she becomes unable to work, Griffin has also felt tremendous shame at being betrayed by her bodyA"like a lover seduced and abandoned." She is angry at the way her illness has been minimized by the scientific and medical communities, even by her own friends. Griffin has an exquisite sense of place and a gripping yet lyrical style. However, her constant return to the themes of Camille wears thin by the book's end, and the short prose poems interspersed throughout are distractingAalternately florid and flat. Despite these flaws, the book offers valuable insights into illness and society, elucidating Griffin's theory that "illness itself uncovers hidden reserves of strength." Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Citations
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9
books
cite this book:
- The Poetics of Childhood (Children's Literature and Culture) by Roni Natov in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma by Jerome Bernstein on page 219, and Back Matter