Sex with a Brain Injury
On Concussion and Recovery
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For readers of Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom, Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias, and Melissa Febos’s Girlhood, a powerful and deeply personal memoir in essays that sheds light on the silent epidemic of head trauma.
Annie Liontas suffered multiple concussions in her thirties. In Sex with a Brain Injury, she writes about what it means to be one of the “walking wounded,” facing her fear, her rage, her physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on her marriage and other relationships. Forced to reckon with her own queer mother’s battle with addiction, Liontas finds echoes in their pain. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability—particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community. She uncovers the surprising legacy of brain injury, examining its role in culture, the criminal justice system, and through historical figures like Henry VIII and Harriet Tubman. Encountering Liontas’s sharp, affecting prose, the reader can imagine this kind of pain, and having to claw one’s way back to a new normal. The hidden gift of injury, Liontas writes, is the ability to connect with others.
For the millions of people who have suffered from concussions and for those who have endeavored to support loved ones through the painful and often baffling experience of head trauma, this astonishing and compassionate narrative offers insight and hope in equal measure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Liontas (Let Me Explain You) details in this excellent memoir-in-essays the physical and emotional effects of living with head trauma. After getting her first concussion at age 35 in a biking accident, Liontas suffered two more within a year. She experienced debilitating migraines and disorientation, often forgetting where she was and fearing that even the slightest contact could reinjure her. Throughout, Liontas blends personal narrative with reportage and historical research to illuminate the shocking prevalence of brain injuries and the institutional mechanisms that cast doubt on those affected by them. In the essay "doubt, my love," she reckons with the skepticism her chronic illness elicits from others and details how insurance companies and courts have long equated the symptoms of brain trauma with hysteria. The pervasiveness of brain injuries among prisoners is the focus of "professor x and the trauma justice league," in which Liontas notes that nearly all repeat female offenders have a history of head trauma. The collection not only does the tremendous service of raising awareness about the millions of "wounded walking"; it's also a profound meditation on love, as Liontas recounts her and her wife's struggles to remain together in the aftermath of her injury. These unflinching and eye-opening essays wow at every turn.