$16.00
Forthcoming October 27, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-942004-60-8
Available also via Small Press Distribution, Amazon and other fine retailers for $20 retail.
From Foreword by Gayle Brandeis:
“…As its title suggests, this breathtaking anthology is full of…awakening…somatic reunion. ‘Body, bring her back to herself,’ invokes Alison McGhee in ‘The Body Knows,’ the opening piece of the collection, and indeed, in essay after essay, we find writers coming back to their bodies, and finding new senses of safety, of gratitude, of forgiveness within their own flesh, sometimes after years of illness or disability or trauma. ‘Return to your body,’ a voice within Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein tells her in ‘Holy Hour.’ ‘It’s OK now to return.’
The voice of the body, and the urgent need to listen to that voice, thrums throughout this collection. ‘I have learned to trust my gut,’ writes DeAnna Beachley in ‘My body :: in parts,’ a process that is not always easy in a world that teaches us to experience our bodies from the outside in, to focus on how we look instead of how we feel—a world that tells us our minds and bodies are separate; a world that actively separates us from our bodies. ‘I couldn’t bully away my pain any more than the bullies around me could,’ writes Barb Mayes Boustead in “Pain’s Imposter Syndrome’; ‘now, I choose to let it speak…We’re still learning to trust each other—me, to trust that my pain is telling the truth, and my body, to trust that I will take the information it gives me to seek relief and assistance and comfort.’
The voice of self that issues forth from the body also thrums through these pages. ‘(M)y mouth is power, magic, bitch, and balm,’ writes Melody Greenfield in ‘Lip Service,’ and the voices in this book are all these things—powerful, magical, healing, bitchy (in the most celebratory and empowering use of the word). ‘These days, when my doctors use words that obscure,’ writes Lizz Schumer in ‘Don’t Lie to Me,’ ‘I illuminate them. I’m not afraid to drag us all squinting into the sun.’ The voice that rises from the body, from our embodied truth, the voice that drags us into the sun, can provoke both personal and social change. ‘Speaking out is a revolutionary act,’ Sarita Sidhu reminds us in her essay ‘Shattering the Dark Silence.’ ‘This is the path to liberation. This is how hope blooms.’….”
Praise for AWAKENINGS
Awakenings is a celebration of the body, the whole body. These essays astonish with tales of teeth, arms, hips, gallbladders, lungs, toes and hair. And hearts, too. These are deeply moving stories about how we move through life and make sense of it all. More than anything, this collection celebrates voices. “Speaking out is a revolutionary act,” writes Sarita Sidhu. Awakenings is a spectacular revolutionary chorus.
–Ana Maria Spagna, author of Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going and Pushed: Miners, a Merchant, and (Maybe) a Massacre
With subjects ranging from mikveh to miscarriage, Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness is an honest and intimate collection of personal stories about struggles with physical frailty, shame, abuse, and body image. For many of the authors, recollecting the past through writing becomes a path towards acceptance and healing. As Alison McGhee says, “Body, oh body, she lives inside you but she doesn’t always remember, does she?” Reading these essays helps us remember what it means to belong to a body, to cherish and honor the most vulnerable aspects of ourselves.
—Joan Baranow, author of Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague
Ever since we evolved enough to become conscious of our physical selves, the human body has been 206 different bones of contention. And that has never been more true than today, when the challenges of the body, and the battles over the body, define so much of our discourse. In Awakenings, forty-nine writers bear brilliant witness to the perils and promise of the human organism. Speaking from a wide range of identities and experiences, they write of the body in childhood, the body bearing children, body differences, body dysmorphia, the body in intimate or social relation to other bodies, the body aging, and all the shocks the flesh is heir to. They testify to the body violated and the body rightfully reclaimed. Journeying through this book, you will feel yourself intrigued and awakened. These writers show us how we can empower our own embodiment.
–David Groff, author of Live in Suspense
Awakenings is more than an anthology. This collection is an offering, a chorus of voices carefully orchestrated, singing and howling, sometimes in harmony, other moments in acapella or hushed string ensemble. No matter, you’ll stay for the entire concert and find yourself forever altered after. The book launches with “The Body Knows” by Alison McGhee, tugging line by line—through meditation, incantation, song. Essay after essay spans body territory from violation to self-acceptance. I’m left with my own body in sway from the voltage of story, tender and profound, each approached with impeccable craft. Awakenings is part of a necessary conversation in our world and will linger in my heart.
–Rebecca Evans, author of Tangled by Blood, a memoir in verse
This fascinating collection of short pieces, as various as human existence, connects mind and body. More importantly it connects our individual selves to others, as we are shown in brief flashes what it is like to inhabit another body and the unique interpretation that each person brings to this experience.
–Shlomit Fuhrer, MD, Psychiatrist
There is such beauty and vulnerability in this collection. Such unexpected joy in these writers’ explorations of complicated, hard truths. Essay after gorgeous essay of validation and even comfort. “What if your body is glorious now?” Maureen Aitken writes in The Question Body. And my whole self answers: YES.
–Hannah Grieco, editor of And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing and Already Gone
I was moved to tears by several of the raw and revealing essays in Awakenings. This anthology honors what it means to inhabit the human body—especially in moments of immense betrayal. Cheers to the brave contributors for sharing their most personal stories!
–Debbie Russell, author of Crossing Fifty-One: Not Quite a Memoir
Regardless of your life experience Awakenings will expand your consciousness and awaken you to the real triumphs and challenges of being human. Not the sugar-coated version but an honest raw accounting of becoming your true self in a world that doesn’t encourage it. Sharing intimate details of our most important relationship, our relationship to ourselves. This collection is a powerful ray of healing light sent out into the world for all who read it.
–Laura Malfa, Spiritual coach at One Heart
If the body could speak, these are the tales it would tell. This moving collection of essays pulls back the curtain on marker moments from living in a body, inside and out. Together these pieces offer insights and collected wisdom that comes from exploring a body’s journey through pain, healing, size, health and aging.
–Ellen Blum Barish, author of Seven Springs: A Memoir and Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family & Life
The essays in Awakenings explore the exquisite pleasure and pain of having a body. Through these narratives, the writers share not only the complexity of their corporeal forms but also the inner workings of their hearts and minds. We see the many ways our bodies can fail or betray us, make us vulnerable or weak, but we also see the glory in our bodies, which can triumph and survive. I felt newly awakened after reading this stunning collection – thankful to be alive and housed inside my own imperfect body.
–Shasta Grant, author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home and cofounder of Brown Bag Lit
These stories cover every aspect of the body, such as hair, teeth, breasts, things you can change, and things you can’t. If you’ve felt betrayed and empowered by your body, sometimes in the same moment, you’ll see yourself in this anthology and come away with a greater understanding and acceptance of human nature.
–Allison Renner, author of Won’t Be By Your Side
The idea of the body, the object of the body–the culturally policed and commodified incarnations of the body–are stripped of all artifice and laid unapologetically bare in Awakenings. From aging and ability to trauma and transformation, each story in this anthology performs a kind of deliverance upon the reader. Through the brave testimonies and honest accounts of some phenomenal writers, we are reacquainted with our estranged forms and invited to empathize with our fellow humans…we are encouraged to live fully inhabited lives.
–Tara Stillions Whitehead, They More Than Burned
Contributors: Camille U. Adams, Maureen Aitken, Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, Melissa Flores Anderson, Andrew Baise, Eleonora Balsano, Melissa Llanes Brownlee, Marion Dane Bauer, G Lev Baumel, DeAnna Beachley, Kelli Short Borges, Barb Mayes Boustead, Amy Champeau, Ezekiel Cork, Jocelyn Jane Cox, Aria Dominguez, Jacqueline Doyle, Deirdre Fagan, Jennifer Fischer, Elizabeth Fletcher, Jennifer Fliss, Melody Greenfield, Suzanne Hicks, Ann Kathryn Kelly, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, Nina Lichtenstein, Tracy Rothschild Lynch, Alison McGhee, Claudia Monpere, James Montgomery, Ellen Birkett Morris, Sandell Morse, Monica Nathan, Claude Olson, Terry Opalek, Melissa Ostrom, Maggie Pahos, Jane Palmer, Wendy L. Parman, Tania Richard, Kim Steutermann Rogers, Kim Ruehl, Lizz Schumer, Sarita Sidhu, Whitney Vale, Karen J. Weyant, Cynthia Wold, Sue Zueger
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