Indispensable essays on the body, mind, and spirit by Molly McCully Brown, author of the acclaimed poetry collection, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

In seventeen intimate essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body―in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of―indeed, in response to―physical constraints, Brown leads a peripatetic life: the essays comprise a vivid travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy. Moving between these locales and others, Brown constellates the subjects that define her inside and out: a disabled and conspicuous body, a religious conversion, a missing twin, a life in poetry. As she does, she depicts vividly for us not only her own life but a striking array of sites and topics, among them Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the world’s oldest anatomical theater, the American Eugenics movement, and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Throughout, Brown offers us the gift of her exquisite sentences, woven together in consideration, always, of what it means to be human―flawed, potent, feeling.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

“Brown is a writer to watch...Heartfelt and wrenching, a significant addition to the literature of disability.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“At times painful to read, it is equally difficult to put down. The reader feels Brown’s anguish but also appreciates fleeting moments of beauty ... The essays are enlightening on so many levels as she describes situations many of us take for granted ... Brown’s essays can feel like a punch in the gut, but they are beautiful, nevertheless.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Masterful, heartrending essays that neither shy away from pain nor bow down to it…” — Women’s Review of Books

“From the locus of her own constantly changing, often intractable body, Molly McCully Brown captures the fullness of the human experience ― desire, loss, flesh, faith, poetry, place, memory ― with lyric compression and expansive grace. Reading these exquisite essays made me want to get out and do something with my own body ― kneel at an altar and recite the Hail Mary, stub out a cigarette in Bologna, stand on a hilltop and shout expletives at the Trump administration. Which is to say, these are urgent, compelling essays that remind us how to be fully alive inside our own bodies, wherever we take them.” — Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and I Want to Show You More

“These remarkable essays invite us to look long and hard at our own interior landscapes, and to negotiate exterior ones with as much grace and gratitude as we can muster.” — Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer prize winning author of Amity & Prosperity.

“These beautifully structured essays draw us closer to the poetry that sings beneath the everyday. Those who wish to discover the divine outside the church sanctuary, outside the narrow confines of the body, will find here a map Brown has generously drawn. This is a work of great humanity.” — Garrard Conley author of Boy Erased

“This book is an important and beautiful rethinking of how bodies move through the world.” — Claire Dederer author of Poser