Sharp: Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
MIchelle Dean, 2018year
Grove Atlantic
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802125095
Summary
Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm—these brilliant women are the central figures of Sharp.
Their lives intertwine as they cut through the cultural and intellectual history of America in the twentieth century, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the sexist attitudes of the men who often undervalued their work as critics and essayists.
These women are united by what Dean terms as "sharpness," the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit, a claiming of power through writing rather than position.
Sharp is a vibrant and rich depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slanging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books as well as a considered portrayal of how these women came to be so influential in a climate where women were treated with derision by the critical establishment.
Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is an enthralling exploration of how a group of brilliant women became central figures in the world of letters despite the many obstacles facing them, a testament to how anyone not in a position of power can claim the mantle of writer and, perhaps, help change the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978 (?)
• Raised—Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto; L.L.M, McGill University
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Citation for Reviewing
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California, USA
Michelle Dean is a Canadian author, journalist, and former lawyer who now lives in Los Angeles, California. The child of parents born in Quebec, she grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa. She earned her B.A. from Toronto University and, in 2005, a law degree from McGill University.
After law school Dean left Canada for New York City where she spent five years working as an attorney in a large corporate law firm. In 2010, not particularly happy with the law (and laid off), Dean returned to Canada, settling in Toronto to pursue freelance journalism. Shortly after, however, she returned to New York to continue her writing career, then on to Los Angeles, California.
A contributing editor at the New Republic, she has written for The New Yorker, Nation, New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York Magazine, Elle, Harper’s, and BuzzFeed. In 2016 she received the National Book Critics Circle’s 2016 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.
Her book Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Opinion was released to favorable reviews in 2018. (Adapted from various online sources.)
Book Reviews
A virtue of [Dean's] book is that it shows how each woman, by wielding a pen as if it were a scalpel or a scimitar, confounded the gender norm of niceness and placed her analytical prowess front and center. Among 20th-century intellectuals, "men might have outnumbered women, demographically," Dean writes, but "in the arguably more crucial matter of producing work worth remembering, the work that defined the terms of their scene, the women were right up to par—and often beyond it."… Dean artfully shepherds the reader through the professional and personal ups and downs of each life, keeping an eye on the affinities—a taste for battle, an ethic of intellectual honesty—that made some of them allies (McCarthy and Arendt, Arendt and Adler) and drove others apart (McCarthy and Sontag, Adler and Kael).
Laura Jacobs - New York Times Book Review
[A]n entertaining and erudite cultural history of selected female thinkers who "came up in a world that was not eager to hear women’s opinions about anything." Indeed, Ms. Dean herself performs the work of a public intellectual by doing justice to the substance of her subjects’ work, while also conveying―through her own wit and lively opinions―why their work matters.
Maureen Corrigan - Wall Street Journal
[A] timely new book.… Dean deftly and often elegantly traces these women’s arguments about race, politics and gender.… The book is consistently entertaining and often truly provocative―especially for anyone who makes or loves art or literature.… [U]rgent in its own right.
Kate Tuttle - Los Angeles Times
Sharp is a dinner party you want to be at.… Dean’s literary bash is as stimulating and insightful as its roster of guests. She not only encapsulates their biographies and achievements with remarkable concision, but also connects the dots between them.… Sharp is a wonderful celebration of some truly gutsy, brilliant women.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
In a happy case of it takes one to know one, Michelle Dean has delivered a penetrating book about penetrating American writers.… Drawing on close readings of their works and other sources, Dean succinctly charts how these women broke into public discourse and how they were viewed and received . . . Dean serves one incisive sentence after another.
Jim Higgins - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A sagacious, stylish survey of 10 female essayists, critics, scholars and memoirists.… Not just a tribute to 10 remarkable women but to virtues that all writers―male and female alike―can aspire to: toughness, tenacity and clear-headed thinking.
Peter Tonguette - Columbus Dispatch
(Starred review.) Few readers could fail to be impressed by both the research behind and readability of this first book by Dean…. The book has a few glitches.… Taken as a whole, however, this is a stunning…introduction to a group of important writers.
Publishers Weekly
What distinguishes all of these writers, in Dean’s telling, are traits encapsulated by the title adjective: wit, verbal precision, and a kind of polemical fearlessness that made all ten women stand out in a culture very much dominated by men.
Library Journal
[A] uniquely intellectual slant to the current renaissance in women’s historys.… With the word ferocity appearing with satisfying frequency, Dean presents shrewd, discerning, fresh, and crisply composed interpretations of… transformative thinkers. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
…20th-century women whose lives had a deep impact on culture.… [E]ngaging portraits of brilliant minds. A useful take on significant writers "in a world that was not eager to hear women's opinions about anything."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SHARP … then take off on your own:
1. Define what Michelle Dean means by referring to the women in her new book as "sharp." How, as she explains in her preface, how does that description cut differently with respect to gender?
2. The 10 women in Sharp defied female expectations of the 20th century. How much, if at all, do you think cultural expectations for female behavoir have changed in the early 21st century?
3. Of the 10 writers, are there any you're familiar with, whose works you've read?
4. Of the 10 profiles, which did you find most engaging? Whom did you come away wishing you could meet at a dinner party (as NPR's reviewer Heller McAlpin put it)? Which of the women did you not find so admirable?
5. Is there anyone who deserved to be included in Dean's book but wasn't … or who was included but could have been left out? What about Virginia Woolf or Camille Paglia, or perhaps an expanded role for Zora Neale Hurston, who receives only a cameo appearance?
6. Talk about the issues that made some of the women allies (McCarthy and Arendt, Arendt and Adler) and some of them foes (McCarthy and Sontag, Adler and Kael).
7. Neither Joan Didion (gasp!) nor Hannah Arendt supported feminism. Why?
8. How does Dean describe the milieu of the 20th century intellectual life with its cocktail parties and political and literary warfare. Do we have anything similar today?
(Questoins by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Southern Lady Code: Essays
Helen Ellis, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
230 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385543897
Summary
A fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady.
Helen Ellis has a mantra: "If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way."
Say "weathered" instead of "she looks like a cake left out in the rain." Say "early-developed" instead of "brace face and B cups." And for the love of Coke Salad, always say "Sorry you saw something that offended you" instead of "Get that stick out of your butt, Miss Prissy Pants."
In these twenty-three raucous essays Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a $795 Burberry trench coat, witnesses a man fake his own death at a party, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen.
While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Raised—Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Helen Ellis is the author of two novels, a collectiion of short stories, and one of essays. She is also a world class poker player.
Her first novel, Eating the Cheshire Cat (2001), is a dark comedy written in Southern Gothic fiction style. It tells the story of three girls raised in the South and the odd, sometimes macabre, tribulations they endure.
Her second novel, The Turning Book: What Curiosity Kills (2010), is a "teen vampire" story about a 16-year-old girl from the South adopted into a wealthy New York City family. The book's plot includes shape-shifting, teen romance, and the supernatural.
Ellis's story collection, American Housewife (2016) contains 12 stories that turn the stereotypical housewife ideal on its head. Each one centers on the trials and tribulations of a particular housewife.
In addition to writing, Ellis also competes in high-stakes poker tournaments. Passionate about poker from the time her father first taught her the game when she was six, she began playing in tournaments in 2008. Two years later, she won $20,000 at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
A year later, fellow author Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor, etc.) hired her as his coach in the World Series of Poker. He wrote about the expperience in his book The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death (2014).
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/3/2016. Also from a 12/22/2015 New York Times article.)
Book Reviews
Helen Ellis returns with an essay collection about shifting moral codes as seen through the lens of her Southern upbringing.… [Her] sense of humor and honesty never fail to charm.
Wall Street Journal
Prepare yourself for some off-the-wall hilarity… Ellis is fun—like the Nutter Butter snowmen she serves at her retro holiday parties.
NPR
Good advice and great reading.… Ellis kills, whether on the page or at the poker table.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Expecting out-of-town guests who need schooling in the ways of the South? Hand them a copy of Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis.
Augusta Chronicle
With a voice that’s equal parts Nora Ephron and David Sedaris, this Alabama-raised, NYC-honed author should be your new woman crush.… Full of piss and vinegar and hilarious one-liners that beg to be read aloud. Best of all, Ellis—a woman of spiky, unrepentant complexity—makes the case for living according to no one’s rules but your own.
Family Circle
It’s hard to adequately describe these delightful autobiographical essays. Maybe that’s because Alabama-born Ellis’s take on Southern manners and mores is a unique blend of sardonic and sincere. More likely because it’s difficult to formulate sentences when you’re laughing this hard.
People
A vibrant storyteller with a penchant for the perverse… Ellis shares her mother’s etiquette advice for handling street crime… and tells of her father staging pretend gun violence to liven up a birthday party. Ellis is a strong, vivid writer—and this book is gut-busting funny.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) By turns lighthearted and heart-wrenching.… Reminiscent of each character from the TV sitcom Designing Women, Ellis’s wonderfully amusing writing is hard to put down, and this book is no exception.
Library Journal
Ellis is a hoot and a half, which, as she might say, is Southern Lady Code for "laughing 'til the tears flow" funny. In nearly two-dozen essays filled with belly laughs and bits of hard-won wisdom, Ellis’ self-deprecating wit and tongue-in-cheek charm provide the perfect antidote to bad-hair, or bad-news, days.
Booklist
Humorous essays from a sassy Southern gal.… The author's brand of humor is subtle and mostly unforced. Her one-liners… and consistently droll remarks keep the amusement factor high and the pages turning. Feisty, funny, lightweight observations on life Southern-style.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SOUTHERN LADY CODE … then let the conversation roll:
1. Begin by talking about Helen Ellis. How would you describe her? Funny, yes. But what else?
2. Which of the essays did you enjoy the most? Let everyone select a favorite and talk about why.
3. Does Ellis's conception of life, the manner in which one treats others, her depiction of Southern etiquette, her attitude toward marriage (and her husband) ring true … have resonance to you? Do you find semblances to your own life in any of her essays… or not? Are there points which you found yourself disagreeing with her?
4. What is Ellis's attitude toward Southern women and their "code"? Does she defend the Southern way of life ... make fun of it? Is her tone one of affection or is it critical and demeaning?
5. And of course, talk about her humor, pointing out some of the funniest lines or situations.
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, 2018
Crown/Archetype
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451495327
Summary
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder.
In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty.
They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States; there, in Chicago, their lives diverged. Though their bond remained unbreakable, Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, while Clemantine was taken in by a family who raised her as their own. She seemed to live the American dream: attending private school, taking up cheerleading, and, ultimately, graduating from Yale.
Yet the years of being treated as less than human, of going hungry and seeing death, could not be erased. She felt at the same time six years old and one hundred years old.
In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine provokes us to look beyond the label of "victim" and recognize the power of the imagination to transcend even the most profound injuries and aftershocks. Devastating yet beautiful, and bracingly original, it is a powerful testament to her commitment to constructing a life on her own terms. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987-88
• Where—Kigali, Rwanda
• Raised—Chicago, IL, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco.
Awards and honors
Hive Global Leader
The Emerging Trailblazer Award
Appointee to The United States Holocaust Memorial Council
(Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [N]ot a conventional story about war and its aftermath [but] a powerful coming-of-age story in which a girl explores her identity in the wake of a brutal war that destroyed her family and home. Wamariya is an exceptional narrator and her story is unforgettable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) This beautifully written and touching account goes beyond the horror of war to recall …a child trying to make sense of violence and strife.… [T]he narrative flows from Wamariya's early experience to her life in the United States with equal grace. A must-read. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami
Library Journal
In her prose as in her life, Wamariya is brave, intelligent, and generous. Sliding easily between past and present, this memoir is a soulful, searing story about how families survive.
Booklist
Record of a childhood in flight from war and terror.… Not quite as attention-getting as memoirs by Ismail Beah or Scholastique Mukasonga, but a powerful record of the refugee experience all the same.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The title of the book is taken from a story Clemantine’s nanny, Mukamana, tells her as a child. How is the story connected to the themes of the book?
2. After fleeing Rwanda, Clemantine fears losing her sense of self in refugee camps. In what ways does her longing to preserve her individuality express itself?
3. In the first chapter of the book, Clemantine tells us: "I have never been Claire. I have never been inviolable." As the story unfolds, she and her sister react to trauma in very different ways, and rely on different survival strategies. How would you characterize their differences? Which events best illustrate those differences?
4. Clemantine’s experience as a "stateless" person is harrowing, yet there are times when she and her sister experience great kindness and generosity. Describe some of the kindnesses that stood out to you.
5. Why do Clemantine’s sister and mother instruct her not to accept gifts? And why does Clemantine come to see acts of charity as a negative thing? Do you agree with her view of charity?
6. Clemantine sets forth an alternative to charity, an ethic of sharing. What are the origins of this practice in her life?
7. The authors write: "In Rwanda, if you’re female, you are born with great value—not because of who you are as an individual or your mind, but because of your body." What do they mean by that? How has that mind-set affected Clemantine’s life, both during the time she was seeking refuge and in the United States? Do you see any parallels to this attitude about the female body in your own culture?
8. After she arrives in the United States, there are times when Clemantine feels alienated by American culture. What is most surprising to her about American culture? What are some of the things that make her uncomfortable or anger her?
9. Clemantine takes issue with the word genocide, which she describes as "clinical, overly general, bloodless, and dehumanizing." In her view, that one word cannot adequately capture the atrocities of racialization and war in Rwanda. Do you agree that words and abstract concepts can distort or overwrite people’s experience? Are there words about which you feel similarly?
10. Clemantine sometimes speaks at events about being a survivor of genocide. In some ways she finds it rewarding but more often she finds it unsatisfying. What is it that she finds objectionable and why?
11. Clemantine writes about how important her katundu, or stuff, is to her. What do you think the objects she collects represent to her? What cherished objects have you saved, and what do they mean to you?
12. Clemantine talks about how meaningful the works of Eli Wiesel, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin, and W. G. Sebald have been for her. In what ways did these writers equip her to grapple with her past, her pain, and her feelings of loneliness and isolation? In what ways did they expand her worldview? Who are the writers whose work has been most valuable to you in making sense of difficult events of your own past?
13. Clemantine goes on a trip to Kenya with fellow students when she is at Yale, but she ends up returning early. What does she find difficult about the trip?
14. Clemantine describes returning to Rwanda for Remembrance Day, where the government has an official historical narrative, seen in the Kigali Genocide Memorial and President Kagame’s speech. Describe the Rwandan government’s version of the country’s history. In what ways does this narrative give Rwandan people "a way to tolerate an intolerable truth"?
15. Claire tells Clemantine: "Everything is yours, everything is not yours. The world owes you nothing; nobody deserves more or less than the next person." What does she mean by that? If those values were universally practiced, how might our society and the global community look different?
16. Why do Clemantine and Claire feel so differently about the adage "Forgive and forget"? Do you believe in forgiving and forgetting wrongs that have been done to you?
17. At age twenty-eight, Clemantine invites her mother on a trip to Europe. What does she hope to achieve with the trip? In what ways is she disappointed?
18. Why do you think the authors chose to structure the book so that it oscillates between Clemantine’s time in Africa and her life after emigrating to the United States, rather than as a linear story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Nina Riggs, 2017
Simon & Schuster
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501169359
Summary
An exquisite memoir about how to live—and love—every day with “death in the room,” from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air.
“We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.”
Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer—one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.
How does one live each day, "unattached to outcome"? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?
Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, even as she wrestles with the legacy of her great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nina Riggs’s breathtaking memoir continues the urgent conversation that Paul Kalanithi began in his gorgeous When Breath Becomes Air.
She asks, what makes a meaningful life when one has limited time?
Brilliantly written, disarmingly funny, and deeply moving, The Bright Hour is about how to love all the days, even the bad ones, and it’s about the way literature, especially Emerson, and Nina’s other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. It’s a book about looking death squarely in the face and saying “this is what will be.”
Especially poignant in these uncertain times, The Bright Hour urges us to live well and not lose sight of what makes us human: love, art, music, words. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 29, 1977
• Raised—North of Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Death—February 26, 2017
• Where—Greensboro, North Carolina
Nina Riggs was a poet, author, wife, and mother of two young sons, who died of breast cancer in 2017 at the age of 39. Her memoir The Bright Hour, about living and loving "with death in the room, was published several months after her death. The book was widely acclaimed for its inspiration, even humor, and became an bestseller.
Riggs traced her literary lineage back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, her great-great-great grandfather. As she told Nora Krug of the Washington Post:
His legacy hangs long over our family, and I grew up right near his old stomping grounds north of Boston. I was literally and figuratively raised in his shadow and, since I really wanted to be a writer from a young age, I guess I was bound to have to contend with his legacy. But I didn’t always have any sense of that. In fact, I came to an understanding of his writing only later in my life. For many years I didn’t even engage with Emerson directly. His portraits were around, and the family had first editions of Emerson’s work.
Riggs left Massachusetts for North Carolina where she earned her B.A. and her M.F.A. in poetry. in 2009 she published a book of poems, Lucky, Lucky.
Breast cancer was rife in her family, on both sides—she lost her mother nearly two years before her own death, and a great aunt was diagnosed in the 1970s. When Riggs herself was diagnosed, in 2015, she wrote about living with the disease on her blog, Suspicious Country. The memoir grew out of her blog.
Riggs' other work appeared in The Washington Post and New York Times. Riggs lived with her husband John Durbenstein, a lawyer, and their two young sons in Greensboro, North Carolina. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Knowing Nina Riggs died shortly after writing The Bright Hour…makes this moving and often very funny memoir almost unbearable to read. But that's because it is not one bromide after the other. It is true, and it might crush you…You can read a multitude of books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live.
Judith Newman - New York Times Book Review
The Bright Hour is a stunning work, a heart-rending meditation on life—not just how to appreciate it while you’re living it, but how to embrace its end, too. It is this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.
Nora Krug - Washington Post
A vivid, immediate dispatch from the front lines of mortality and a record of a life by someone who wasn't done living yet. But there is nothing maudlin about it...her warm portraits of each of [the members of her closest circle] are a large part of the book's emotional power. So is something we don't notice fully until it's gone: the strength and clarity of Riggs's voice, which never faded on the page, and which we won't get to hear again.
Laura Collins-Hughes - Boston Globe
Like the bestselling When Breath Becomes Air, the work she left behind is a beautiful testament to the quiet magic of everyday life and making the most of the time we are given, whether it’s spent taking last-minute trips to Paris, wallpapering the mudroom, or reveling in a newly purchased couch. "These are the things we all say at the end of book club now: I love you," she writes. "Of course we do. Why haven’t we been saying that all along?"
New York Post
Beautiful and haunting…a thoughtful and heartbreaking exploration of what makes life meaningful in a person's remaining days...Buried within this agonizing tale are moments of levity—I laughed out loud many, many times—and flashes of poetry.… This book provides a stunning look at that experience and has forever changed my understanding of the illness narrative. It’s a book every doctor and patient should read…It's hard not to compare The Bright Hour to When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi's best-selling memoir about his battle with lung cancer. Both were in their late 30s when they discovered they were dying, and both write spare prose with a poignancy that is uncommon. However, Riggs' book is markedly different in tone and content. It's more humorous and less philosophical — but equally moving.
USA Today - Matt McCarthy, MD,
Poet Nina Riggs was only 37, the mother of two young sons, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Within a year she had lost her mother to multiple myeloma—and learned her own cancer was terminal as well. Riggs died last February, leaving behind this deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death. As she lyrically, unflinchingly details her reality, she finds beauty and truth that comfort even amid the crushing sadness.
People
Profound and poignant...superb...I put down The Bright Hour a slightly different, and better, person—unbearably sad and also feeling, as Riggs did, "the hug of the world."
Kelly Corrigan - O Magazine
In this memoir, published posthumously, Nina Riggs asks: How do you make life meaningful when you know your time is limited? With humor and honesty, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying chronicles Riggs’s diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer and the moments shared with her school-age sons and her husband before her death at age 39.
Real Simple
(Starred review.) Riggs frequently quotes her legendary relative and uses his writings as a guide…. In this tender memoir Riggs displays a keen awareness of and reverence for all the moments of life—both the light, and the dark, “the cruel, and the beautiful.”
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Poet Riggs…reminds us that we are all in this world until we leave it; the gallows humor surrounding her mother's funeral will make readers howl guiltily but appreciatively.…beautifully crafted book as it imbues life and loved ones with a particularly transcendent glow. —Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A loving mother of two meditates on the nature of life and death.… Riggs' indefatigable spirit is the true heroine in this story of life and loss; even in her darkest moments, she writes, "the beautiful, vibrant, living world goes on." A luminous, heartbreaking symphony of wit, wisdom, pain, parenting, and perseverance against insurmountable odds.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Bright Hour … then take off on your own:
1. Nina Riggs has written a remarkable memoir—about a facing down a deadly disease—and done so with courageous and even, at times, humor. Find passages that strike you as particularly brave or inspirational or witty or sad. What passages stand out to you in terms of their sheer emotional power?
2. Riggs poses a question we all grapple with, but for her its answer was most urgent: what makes a meaningful life, particularly when that life is to be cut short? How does Riggs answer that question? How would you answer it?
3. The book's title comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to become as large as the World." What does the passage mean and what is its significance to the memoir?
4. Talk about how the death of Riggs' mother, Jan, affected her? Consider how painful it must have been for her mother to know she couldn't be there for Nina when she needed her.
5. After her surgery, Riggs' doctor dissuaded her from reconstructive surgery—"That's a survivor issue. We're not there yet." Was that a proper response on the doctor's part? How might you have felt had you received the answer: angry, fearful, or grateful for the honesty?
6. Talk about her husband's Epilogue and Acknowledgements. What does he reveal about himself in his writing and about his and Riggs' relationship?
7. Riggs wrote: "There are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges, a lack of self-awareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husband's face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup." Do you agree that there are things worse than death? If so, what would you add to that list?
8. Overall, how did you experience The Bright Hour? Have you read Randy Pausche's The Last Lecture (2008) or Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air (2016)? If so, is Riggs' book similar to either one in tone and message?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
Barbara K. Lipski, Elaine McArdle, 2018
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328787309
Summary
As a deadly cancer spread inside her brain, leading neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was plunged into madness—only to miraculously survive with her memories intact.
In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts Lipska's ordeal and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind.
In January 2015, Lipska—a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness—was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers.
But miraculously, just as her doctors figured out what was happening, the immunotherapy they had prescribed began to work. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.
In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, Lipska describes her extraordinary ordeal and its lessons about the mind and brain. She explains how mental illness, brain injury, and age can change our behavior, personality, cognition, and memory.
She tells what it is like to experience these changes firsthand. And she reveals what parts of us remain, even when so much else is gone. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 7, 1951
• Where—Warsaw, Poland
• Education—MSci., University of Warsaw; Ph.D., Medical Academy of Warsaw
• Currently—lives in Annandale, Virginia, USA
Barbara K. Lipska, Ph.D. is director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development.
A native of Poland, she holds a Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Medical School of Warsaw, and is an internationally recognized leader in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia.
Before emigrating from Poland to the United States, Dr. Lipska was a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw. She has been at NIMH since 1989 and has published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
A marathon runner and a triathlete, she lives with her husband, Mirek Gorski, in Virginia. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Barbara Lipska is the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health in Virginia. Over the course of two months in 2015, she found herself on the strangest journey of her life. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma that had metastasized to her brain, a seemingly terminal condition that mimicked the symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia. Remarkably, her immunotherapy regimen was successful; equally remarkable, she has recreated that period of mental illness and cognitive trauma on the pages of this unusual memoir.
Toronto Globe & Mail
It’s not often a research scientist, especially one who studies mental illness and the brain, experiences their specialty first hand, and it’s even more rare with this sort of mental break, medical or behavioral. If you enjoyed My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor or Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan, this is the memoir you want to read in 2018.
KXSU Seattle
Lipska’s evolution as scientist, patient, and person explores the physiological basis of mental illness, while uplifting the importance of personal identity…. Lipska’s prose soars when narrating her experiences… her story is evidence that rich personal narratives offer value to an empirical pursuit of neuroscientific investigation.
Science Magazine
This is the story, harrowing yet redemptive, of Barbara Lipska, stricken at 63 with a form of brain cancer. The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, cowritten with Elaine McArdle, is the tale she lived to tell...If Lipska’s book is about "what it’s actually like to lose your mind and then recover it," it’s also about a new frontier in cancer care and the vertiginous trajectories for recovery being opened up...Imbued with scientific insight.… Pondering the term "survivor," Lipska finds the dictionary definition—someone who perseveres and "remains functional and usable"—resonant. Her mind and body battered, she wonders if she meets this standard. If this memoir is any guide, she more than measures up to it.
Weekly Standard
Lipska shares excruciating details of the drug therapies and other treatments she underwent…. Her exhilarating memoir reveals the frustrations of slow recovery, and that even with the best medical care there are no guarantees for good health.
Publishers Weekly
Most patients with similar brain cancers rarely survive to describe their ordeal. Lipska's memoir, coauthored with journalist McArdle, shows that strength and courage but also a encouraging support network are vital to recovery. —Lucille M. Boone, San Jose P.L., CA
Library Journal
Lipska knew a thing or two about mental illness. But she knew considerably more after she exhibited signs of the disease and came back from the brink with amazing insights.… Her story conveys deep understanding about the brain and how disease…can change our very selves.
Booklist
A vibrant mental health expert's bout with brain cancer and the revolutionary treatments that saved her life.… A harrowing, intimately candid survivor's journey through the minefields of cancer treatment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND … then take off on your own:
1. When Barbara Lipska's symptoms began with the day her right hand disappeared at the keyboard and her colleagues' faces disappeared in a staff meeting, how do you think her intimate knowledge of the brain as a neuroscientist affected her respons?
2. Talk about the many ways in which Lipska's disease caused changes in her behavior. Why did it take so long for her to recognize the alteration in her personality?
3. How did Lipska's illness affect her family? If you were a friend, or especially a family member, how would you have responded to those new, unpleasant traits?
4. Lipska has residual guilt about her insensitive behavior. Do you think it possible that she will ever come to terms with that guilt? What would you say to her?
5. Has reading this memoir given you new knowledge or insights into the workings of the human brain, especially the frontal and parietal cortex? What do you find most interesting about our brains in terms of how they work—and at times don't work?
6. Lipska says that mental illness is a brain disease, not a matter of weakness or lack of will power. What is the state of scientific knowledge about the causes and effects of mental illness? How much remains unknown?
7. Have you had personal experience with mental illness—either someone in your family or a close friend?
8. Lipska wonders whether or not she is a "survivor." Why does she question the degree with which she meets the definition? Do you think she's a survivor?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)