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A review by hilaryreadsbooks
Places I've Taken My Body: Essays by Molly McCully Brown
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
(cw: ableism, eugenics, medical violence)
This book asked to be held, to be loved, to be placed close to the heart of any disabled person who has mourned changes in their body.
Molly McCully Brown, disabled poet, writes in this set of essays on loss, grief, and discoveries of new margins: "[m]y first body...exists only before my memory...I wake into the world at the moment of its refashioning." Becoming disabled (and becoming more disabled), we sometimes forget when speaking about the disability experience, is a violent process (and sometimes a continuous process) for some, a sudden shift from one body into the next. Falling asleep in one body only to wake up in another. Adjusting to one body—loving it, even—only to lose that sense of familiarity, of knowing. And then to begin that journey of reknowing, without choosing it, or never really accepting what you have to reknow.
In BODYMINDS REIMAGINED, Sami Schalk speaks about the complexities of "disability pride": we don't usually think of pride as making space to both grieve and love who you are, who you have become. For Brown, the constant changes to her body, both from surgery and the degenerative nature of her disability, means that "[t]he tectonic plates of who [she is] are always shifting." I think that sometimes disabled folks are silenced in their grief, individualized, because of the front we have to put on, to make sure we have our best face on for abled people. There's that constant worry that if we talk about the pain or the loss, it'll somehow confirm the worst kinds of ableist stereotypes that they use to label us.
But at this horizon, in Brown's new world, we are courageously invited into this space of vulnerable grief. We are also offered a chance at discovery, of knowing ourselves anew. A complex rebirth. And in these ways, Brown's book held me, loved me, stayed close to my heart—reminded me of the ways my grief are valid.
This book asked to be held, to be loved, to be placed close to the heart of any disabled person who has mourned changes in their body.
Molly McCully Brown, disabled poet, writes in this set of essays on loss, grief, and discoveries of new margins: "[m]y first body...exists only before my memory...I wake into the world at the moment of its refashioning." Becoming disabled (and becoming more disabled), we sometimes forget when speaking about the disability experience, is a violent process (and sometimes a continuous process) for some, a sudden shift from one body into the next. Falling asleep in one body only to wake up in another. Adjusting to one body—loving it, even—only to lose that sense of familiarity, of knowing. And then to begin that journey of reknowing, without choosing it, or never really accepting what you have to reknow.
In BODYMINDS REIMAGINED, Sami Schalk speaks about the complexities of "disability pride": we don't usually think of pride as making space to both grieve and love who you are, who you have become. For Brown, the constant changes to her body, both from surgery and the degenerative nature of her disability, means that "[t]he tectonic plates of who [she is] are always shifting." I think that sometimes disabled folks are silenced in their grief, individualized, because of the front we have to put on, to make sure we have our best face on for abled people. There's that constant worry that if we talk about the pain or the loss, it'll somehow confirm the worst kinds of ableist stereotypes that they use to label us.
But at this horizon, in Brown's new world, we are courageously invited into this space of vulnerable grief. We are also offered a chance at discovery, of knowing ourselves anew. A complex rebirth. And in these ways, Brown's book held me, loved me, stayed close to my heart—reminded me of the ways my grief are valid.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism