Disrupting the Body – Review by Jennifer Brough

Disrupting the Body – Review by Jennifer Brough

Jennifer is a writer and editor based in Birmingham; her work has most recently appeared in Luna Luna Magazine, Artsy, and The Debutante. She is a member of resting up collective, a group of disabled and chronically ill creatives.

Disrupting the Body: An anthology of speculative memoir

Edited by Nici West

Published by Boudicca Press

Having a body is complicated. As Verity Holloway says in her introduction, “our physical shells are magnets for outside expectations” and living is made even more difficult when our corporeal forms don’t behave in the way they are expected to — be it through illness, disability, how we are racialised or gendered by society, or the nexus of all of these. In this collection of twelve personal essays, the reader wanders among lenses that depart from reality by which the authors frame experiences of alienation in and strangeness to oneself.

Louise Kenward’s opening highlights the role of chance in illness, an insight that resonates all the more in the devastating impact of COVID-19 and its long-term effects. Irenosen Okojie’s lyrical essay ‘Aslym’ reflects on her experience of having COVID as well as the difficulties of navigating the medical system in her body, “I am a Black woman. I do not have time to fully rely on systems where the odds are stacked against me”. With infectious panic, she charts the realisation of having a serious illness and its impact on herself and relationality to her family.

The speaker in Chikodili Emelumadu’s ‘Yolk’ outlines her body (and disruptions to it) through Igbo mythology. As she grows, ọgbanje sprites settle on her chest, growing “fat and soft on the attention” from her family members and community. This rich magical realism envelops the female body in additional layers to societal pressure, disbelief, and blame, with the story’s revelation linger wryly.

Other brilliant departures from bodily reality see authors casting their bodies as the Mary Celeste, an immersive art gallery installation, and an alien and a weapon. While others use reality as a springboard to investigate through memory, ghostly encounters on strong painkillers, and becoming unfamiliar to oneself.

While Disturbing the Body is only 150 pages long, each voice within it forms a powerful collective that emphasizes the importance of sharing experiences. As Louise Kenward touches upon, these stories — and those we tell outside of the pages — form “the depth of knowledge you can only learn from those who have trekked in these places”. The value of embodied testimony within a medical system that is not designed to support certain bodies is a well from which to draw mutual strength, encouraging us to each reclaim our illness narrative from the confines of the medical model.

In order of appearance, the authors featured are: Verity Holloway, Natasha Kindred, Lauren Brown, Nina K.Fellows, Abi Hynes, Marion Michell, Louise Kenward, Chikodili Emelumadu, Laura Elliott, Beverley Butcher, Jane Hartshorn and Irenosen Okojie.

Some titles that explore similar themes:
The Undying by Anne Boyer
Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde