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Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos
5 reviews
bdingz's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
4.0
Moderate: Addiction
Minor: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, and Emotional abuse
bookaholiz's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I didn’t know what I expect when I pick up this book but it sure was different from my imagination. Sometimes, these are happy accidents, and this book was one of them.
It was a book on how to write about yourself, but to simplify it that way is diminishing its powerful message. In some way, the book was part memoir, as the author brought her own personal narrative into it to illustrate how she had woven the intricacies of her experience in the process of her craft.
Melissa Febos wrote with a tenacity and intensity that was overwhelming at first, when she dived into her sexual encounters and erotic desires and how one can write about sex. But once I settled into her fervent honesty, she had shown me the underlying purpose of the things she included, the wisdom of someone who had written as a mean to survive. In that I see myself, not at that level but starting to climb those first steps into writing something that makes sense of it all. Whether publication was the goal or not.
If I was familiar with her works prior to reading this, I might have had a less discombobulated start, but I actually have read an essay of her in the book “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” before, and hadn’t realized that until I was in the middle of reading Body Work. The fact that I recognized her writing from a collection I read years ago (and didn’t really remember it that well) really showed how much of an impression her writing had made. Will be looking forward to read her other works, even if the honesty promised by those books scares me.
It was a book on how to write about yourself, but to simplify it that way is diminishing its powerful message. In some way, the book was part memoir, as the author brought her own personal narrative into it to illustrate how she had woven the intricacies of her experience in the process of her craft.
Melissa Febos wrote with a tenacity and intensity that was overwhelming at first, when she dived into her sexual encounters and erotic desires and how one can write about sex. But once I settled into her fervent honesty, she had shown me the underlying purpose of the things she included, the wisdom of someone who had written as a mean to survive. In that I see myself, not at that level but starting to climb those first steps into writing something that makes sense of it all. Whether publication was the goal or not.
If I was familiar with her works prior to reading this, I might have had a less discombobulated start, but I actually have read an essay of her in the book “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” before, and hadn’t realized that until I was in the middle of reading Body Work. The fact that I recognized her writing from a collection I read years ago (and didn’t really remember it that well) really showed how much of an impression her writing had made. Will be looking forward to read her other works, even if the honesty promised by those books scares me.
Minor: Bullying, Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship
courtneyfalling's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.0
I expected to rate this memoir a lot higher, but it didn't go nearly deep enough nor specific enough into what I expected. There was no mention of writing about illness or disability, for example, which is a huge component of any bodily writing, whether or not 'explicitly' about disability. And I'm perpetually interested in how to (and whether to) ethically write about other people, and this was just so surface level on it compared to what I really thought this could've done.
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual violence and Addiction
lowbrowhighart's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Graphic: Sexual assault and Sexual violence
Moderate: Sexism, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment, Homophobia, Colonisation, Sexual content, Addiction, and Drug use
dmbooks's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Moderate: Colonisation, Sexual content, and Sexual violence
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