Stories are lived in bodies, and made in them, and these books – from memoir to fiction, poetry and beyond – illuminate a central part of human experience
In some ways, every book is about the body. No one lives apart from theirs, and so no writer, speaker or character exists fully removed from the simultaneously fragile and indispensable fact of a corporeal existence. Stories are lived in bodies and made in them; language itself is created in breathing and muscle, in gesture, contraction, release. I could list hundreds of books that draw on rich traditions of writing about illness; disability; gender; race; desire, politics; parenthood; daughterhood; living; and dying, all of them anchored in our bodies.
But instead, here are 10, across genres, and styles, and periods, that influenced the writing of my book Places I’ve Taken My Bodyand the living that led to it. Every list inevitably leaves something out, but I trust that these 10 books will lead you to a thousand more.
Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown is published by Faber. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.
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