FP Staff List: ILL FEELINGS + literary explorations of illness and disability
Alice Hattrick’s Ill Feelings—an intrepid meditation on illness, disability, feminism, and what it means to be alive—is now available from Feminist Press for US readers! In celebration of Hattrick’s genre-bending debut, we’ve created a list of literary explorations of illness and disability that we’ve treasured as readers. From Tessa Miller’s What Doesn’t Kill You to Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility, here’s what we recommend you read (after finishing Ill Feelings of course!)
Margot: Deaf Republic
by Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf)
“Described as a ‘parable in poems,’ Kaminsky's soulful new collection opens on an act of horrific violence before meditating on silence and deafness in times of political unrest. The language is exquisite; the ethical questions Kaminsky poses are provocative.”—Entertainment Weekly
Alisa: Deluge
by Leila Chatti
“To write a series of poems out of extreme illness is a bracing accomplishment indeed. In Deluge... Leila Chatti, born of a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, brilliantly explores the trauma. In a frightening two-year saga of a tumor and the ‘flooding’ it caused, Chatti finds not disassociation but deeper association with her own experience.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times
Rachel: Close to the Knives
by David Wojnarowicz (Vintage)
“David Wojnarowicz is brilliantly attuned to American talk and responsive to the moods and innovations of society’s truants. He also has the best conscience of any writer I know. This fierce, erotic, haunting, truthful book should be given to every teenager immediately.”—Dennis Cooper
Jisu: What Doesn’t Kill You
by Tessa Miller (Henry Holt & Company)
“In this riveting memoir, journalist Tessa Miller describes the sudden onset of severe Crohn’s disease in her twenties. . . . Evocative. . . . She analyzes studies and statistics about healthcare and chronic illness in the U.S., including racial and gender discrimination. It’s a fascinating and disturbing read.”―BuzzFeed