num_pages: 189
description: As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. When her mood-stabilizing medications arent threatening her life theyre shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness sexual trauma ethnic identity and independence become intertwined. Sifting through the scraps of her past in fifteen formally inventive chapters Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitans mandates for womanhood views memories through the distorting lens of Law &amp; Order: Special Victims Unit and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain. Built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain My Body Is a Book of Rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating and ferocious look at human fallibility.
language: English
title: My Body Is a Book of Rules
publisher: Red Hen Press