My body is a book of rules

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Elissa Washuta: My body is a book of rules (2014)

189 pages

English language

Published Jan. 21, 2014

ISBN:
978-1-59709-969-1
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OCLC Number:
880808875

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As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. When her mood-stabilizing medications aren't threatening her life, they're shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual trauma, ethnic identity, and independence become intertwined. Sifting through the scraps of her past in seventeen formally inventive chapters, Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitan's mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain. Built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain, My Body Is a Book of Rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating …

1 edition

Subjects

  • Ethnic identity
  • College teachers
  • Indians of North America
  • Manic-depressive persons
  • Biography
  • Indian women

Places

  • United States
  • North America