Scan barcode
erinisabookworm's review against another edition
5.0
A stunning memoir reflecting on the intersections of disability, academia, identity, culture, gender, friendship and so much more. The storytelling is phenomenal and extremely powerful. I read this book earlier this year and still reflect on it often. It’s a memoir I intend to revisit again and again.
andream0885's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
letsgolesbians's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Misogyny, Racism, and Medical content
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide
libraryoflanelle's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism and Chronic illness
Moderate: Death, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
bookishmillennial's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial
Shahd Alshammari is a Kuwaiti-Palestinian writer and academic who shared her story with us so vulnerably and graciously in this short collection of reflections. It absolutely reads as a memoir, with vignettes shared from her childhood, up to adulthood, but really lives up to the title "reflections on illness". She has Multiple Sclerosis, and revisits journal entries, ruminating on them and how she moves through the world in a disabled body. I'll share a few snippets from the book, and highly recommend this, as it was such a powerful piece of work.
Shahd Alshammari is a Kuwaiti-Palestinian writer and academic who shared her story with us so vulnerably and graciously in this short collection of reflections. It absolutely reads as a memoir, with vignettes shared from her childhood, up to adulthood, but really lives up to the title "reflections on illness". She has Multiple Sclerosis, and revisits journal entries, ruminating on them and how she moves through the world in a disabled body. I'll share a few snippets from the book, and highly recommend this, as it was such a powerful piece of work.
Tata's fight with cancer made me think of the body as the container that we place our traumas in. (6)
My spine was made up of all the stories I carried with me, the ones I had read, taught, and listened to. (12)
The sense of disapora that stayed with the Palestinian wherever he went was inevitable. Every home would be up for disappearance. There was an uneasiness about resting anywhere, an anxiety that remained nestled between generations as they passed it down from one to the other, each time seemingly shrinking in size, while the truth was it continued to rest in the corners of their minds. (40)
But memory is so tricky. It was you who was there. You were feeling every second in your brain and every twitch. When I put this to paper, I don't recall the physical pain, but I do shudder when I think of the loneliness, Emotional pain stays with us and it has been decades since I was that teenager but I can still feel it shifting somewhere between my cells. (44)
Hybridity was proving to be more about balancing the mixture than fusing it wholly together. There was no whole. Everything could easily fall apart. (47)
Language became another vehicle that was supposed to take me places and didn't. I didn't kill language, but I felt though language was slipping away, constantly betraying me. (50)
So many beautiful women around me get sick. One after the other. They got sick of holding on to hope. They got sick of the law. They got sick of suffocating in their huge house, windows closed, doors locked. Houses that shone with brightness and sparkled with the latest furniture from Pottery Barn and high-end stores. Each day, they grew more distant from themselves, a slow self-annihilation. (61)
I think about how we always focus on standard assessments and grades, even though the educational system is flawed. We claim that education is for all without considering individual needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Eighteen-year-old me searched for a Disability Services office at the university but couldn't find one. I didn't even think there was a Disability Services office. I didn't consider myself disabled. I just wanted to ask someone what I should do if I couldn't use my hands to write essays in class when professors demanded all of our essays were written in class, using a pencil (not a pen). Have you ever tried writing with shaking hands? (65)
But, like all of us, there comes a day where you tire of asking for help. You get exhausted with tiptoeing around people as you feel your knees start to give out. And then there's nowhere else to be but in bed. The curtains remain drawn and the room starts to smell. You're not sure if the smell if yours or whether it belongs to dust or the dog. The windows stay shut and you won't bother to get up. (70)
Everything is a problem we have to solve. If not us, then who will? (102)
I had never felt that being a woman was as heavy a burden until I felt the scarlet letter of disability wrapped around my neck. The heaviness weighted me down and continued to push me away from people around me. It pushed me so far away that I ran to academia. I wanted to run faster and faster to avoid falling like Noor, like Dhari, like anyone else who had loved and lost. I knew I loved stories and books, and I wanted to try to see if I could establish a lifelong relationship with academia. Maybe embracing a fictional world would help me understand the real world. Maybe being called "Professor" would help me be seen. I was tired of being unseen and exhausted of hiding. (107)
To be listened to when you're a woman is a frustrating process. There are always others willing to jump in and speak for you, speak on your behalf, help you speak, claim you don't know how to speak so they will do it for you. As a woman with disability, it becomes even harder to be listened to. People assume you have a shameful body simply because you are a woman, you walk around with your awra, a voice that has to be concealed, veiled, silenced. The disabled body is also meant to be hidden, clothed in shame, remaining unrevealed to others because of its grotesqueness, its crossing of boundaries. It is a body that calls attention to itself even when it is meant to be hidden behind closed doors. (122)
Mothers who kill are still mothers. Mothers who bleed onto you are still mothers. Mothers who don't remember you are still mothers. Just like a country that goes up in flames is still your home, even if nothing remains. (127)
Narrating is part of survival. Those who survive know that there is a story to tell, and another to edit, recreate, and pass on. But those who survive also know that there is no ultimate path to healing, to full recovery, that you don't always come back to where you started, that we don't come full circle. Those who tell stories tell them as they occupy more than one space, reflecting on a past, speaking in the present moment, and anticipating a future. I am reminded of feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldua, Chicana feminist, who speaks of the "mestiza" as being one who occupies more than one space, culture, and language. To survive, one must find solace in a third space of belonging. You are already outside of the dominant narrative, outside the margins, away from the centre. (184)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Animal death, Chronic illness, Death, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
morganmalloy's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
rebeccaweger's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism and Chronic illness