Summary of Melissa Febos's Body Work

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I have heard this concern from countless students and peers: stories about body and sex and gender and violence and joy and childhood and family are considered navel-gazing. But I insist that we should always be telling stories so that their specificity reveals some larger truth.

#2 I did not want to write a memoir because I thought that strangers would not be interested in my story. But my own story wouldn’t leave me alone. It called to me the way I have since come to recognize is the call of my best stories, those that most need to be told.

#3 The writing about your wounds is likely to be therapeutic. It is a logical fallacy to conclude that any writing with therapeutic effect is terrible. You don’t have to be into therapy to be healed by writing.

#4 The history of trauma and its stories has always been politicized. Consider the case of hysteria, a mysterious illness that captivated male doctors from antiquity until the beginning of the twentieth century. Its cause was believed to be a rogue uterus, which the ancient Greek doctor Aretaeus described as an animal within an animal, who delights also in fragrant smells.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669390688

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights on Melissa Febos's Body Work

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I have heard this concern from countless students and peers: stories about body and sex and gender and violence and joy and childhood and family are considered navel-gazing. But I insist that we should always be telling stories so that their specificity reveals some larger truth.

#2

I did not want to write a memoir because I thought that strangers would not be interested in my story. But my own story wouldn’t leave me alone. It called to me the way I have since come to recognize is the call of my best stories, those that most need to be told.

#3

The writing about your wounds