Ladyparts: A Memoir

ISBN: 1984855492

Author: Copaken, Deborah

Condition: New

A frank, witty, and dazzlingly written memoir of one woman trying to keep it together while her body falls apart-from the brilliant mind (Michaela Coel, creator of I May Destroy You) behind ShutterbabeThe most laugh-out-loud story of resilience youll ever read and an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing.-Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to SomeoneNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLEIm crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces.Twenty years after her iconic memoir Shutterbabe, Deborah Copaken is at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying-literally-on sexisms battlefield as she scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs into a glass container before heading off to the hospital . . . in an UberPool.Ladyparts is Copakens irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, the story of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, healthcare Frogger, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her fathers death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one atop the other, which provide the books narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. Copaken bounces back from each bum body part, finds workarounds for every setback-she transforms her home into a commune to pay rent, sells her soul for health insurance, turns FBI informant when her sexual harasser gets a presidential appointment-but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, quintessentially American throughout, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir.