Being Embodied

[bibliogramma]

With Her Body, Nicola Griffith

While reading and contemplating this collection of short stories I felt a certain resonance with Nicola Griffith, even though I know little of her other than a few biographical snippets, and what any reader knows of a writer through her work. But it’s that particular area of resonance that makes the three stories in this collection speak to me so strongly.

Like Griffith, I am a woman who deals with a chronic and debilitating disability; my body – which, as a woman in this society is supposed to be the site of my power, my function, my essence – is often for me a site of limitation, frustration, and failure.

This contradiction which is most pertinent to my own situation is most clearly expressed in the second of these three stories, “Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese,” but questions of the body, and most particularly the female body – her body – how it moves, what it senses, how it loves and hurts, gives birth, changes, manifests and loses power, strives to exceed its limitations – are central to all three stories.

These stories are also and very specifically, about women who love other women, her body to her body, and this is something else that is important to explore – women, embodied but not for men but for women.

These stories, written about women acting with their bodies, by a women conscious of her body, had in them many, many things that as I read them, I felt in my body. Nadia dancing with light and sound, Molly crawling through pain to survival, Cleis running wild – each one living intensely with her body.

Comments

[deirdre-nyc.livejournal.com]

Your review made me think of a poem by Minnie Bruce Pratt, but I couldn't find it in the books I have here. I wish I could remember the name of the poem. It's about visiting a friend in the hospital and massaging her swollen feet.

Anyway, you wrote a moving review.

Thanks.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

That sounds familiar, though I could be thinking of another poem by someone else. It's not in any of the books I have here, either.

Thanks for your comment - as you can tell, I was very much affected by these stories. Powerful stuff.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Griffith has published a set of memoirs, titled And Now We Are Going To Have A Party, earlier this year. (It's a limited edition, but I believe there are still plenty of copies available.) However, the memoirs do not cover much of the time after her MS manifested itself. They're about her early years.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I saw something about this not too long ago, although I didn't realise it was a limited edition. I shall have to move it up in the queue and get a copy before it's out of print. Thanks.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

It's available here (http://www.payseurandschmidt.com/party.shtml). Small press. And it's fairly expensive, although it's far more than just a book -- there are scratch 'n sniff cards and a music CD in the box, and more. I preordered it because I wanted to take advantage of the discount at the time, and she's one of my favourite writers, so I really wanted it.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

OH dear. Scratch 'n'sniff cards make it completely out of the question. I can smell an unscratched one 20 metres away, and they make me violently ill.

I'm glad you mentioned that, but sad that I can't buy the book. Even if it's just packaged with the cards being separate, everything will have been permeated with the smell and I'll never be able to go near any of it.

How ironic. One person with a disability wants to make a special experience for her readers, which results in others with a different disability being totally unable to use it.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

How ironic. One person with a disability wants to make a special experience for her readers, which results in others with a different disability being totally unable to use it.

Ironic indeed.

Oh, à propos des scratch and sniff cards -- are you watching Pushing Daisies this week?