A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain (sexual Cultures)
by Christina Crosby /
2016 / English / PDF
1.9 MB Download
In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three
miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her
goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected
senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth
birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch
in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the
pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head
snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.
In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three
miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her
goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected
senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth
birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch
in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the
pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head
snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.
In
InA Body, Undone
A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body
that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She
writes about a body shot through with neurological pain,
disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and
deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon
the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer
thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working
with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in
small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s
through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay
liberation.
, Crosby puts into words a broken body
that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She
writes about a body shot through with neurological pain,
disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and
deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon
the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer
thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working
with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in
small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s
through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay
liberation.
Deeply unsentimental, Crosby communicates in unflinching prose the
experience of "diving into the wreck" of her body to acknowledge
grief, and loss, but also to recognize the beauty, fragility, and
dependencies of all human bodies. A memoir that is a meditation on
disability, metaphor, gender, sex, and love,
Deeply unsentimental, Crosby communicates in unflinching prose the
experience of "diving into the wreck" of her body to acknowledge
grief, and loss, but also to recognize the beauty, fragility, and
dependencies of all human bodies. A memoir that is a meditation on
disability, metaphor, gender, sex, and love,A Body,
Undone
A Body,
Undone is a compelling account of living on, as Crosby
rebuilds her body and fashions a life through writing, memory, and
desire.
is a compelling account of living on, as Crosby
rebuilds her body and fashions a life through writing, memory, and
desire.