The Body Papers

This memoir is one of the most compelling accounts of confronting trauma that I’ve ever read. In the case of the author, the traumas are multiple: fear of deportation due to her “illegal” status; years of sexual abuse by her paternal grandfather; and later in life, the discovery that she carries a gene that leaves her susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. I was moved as I learned how Talusan found the words—both as a writer and as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a romantic partner, and a citizen—to speak of these difficulties. Her writing about this… show more.

There’s nothing flowery in Talusan’s writing (indeed, the prose is so lean, you’d think it ran a decathlon, ate half a grapefruit, and downed a shot of wheatgrass before landing on the page); the bald truths of her narrative cut unerringly, time and again, to the very heart of her trauma. This is a brave account of surviving childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by a revered family elder, and the Sisyphean task of unpacking the ensuing emotional baggage. This narrative serves as a public, shout-from-the-rooftops refusal to carry the shame for a crime someone else has committed.