Body Language

Starred review from March 21, 2022
Originally published in Catapult magazine, these lyrical and incisive essays cover a wide range of topics related to the human body, including birth, death, race, gender, size, disability, and fertility. In “The Crematorium,” Nina Riggs compares witnessing her mother’s cremation while undergoing her own cancer treatment to “some kind of morbid test drive.” Elsewhere, Destiny O. Birdsong offers a harrowing account of trying to find relief for her chronic illness within a medical system that misunderstands Black women and their pain; Kayla Whaley recounts how she learned to accept her feeding tube after losing the ability to swallow solid food; and A.E. Osworth discusses “the thrill of thirst trapping” as a trans person: “When I chopped my tits off, I could finally look in a mirror. Never before have I wanted a photographic record of what I saw there.” In “Little Pink Feet,” Maggie Tokuda-Hall recalls how she sought solace in baking macarons after undergoing painful fertility treatments and a miscarriage, while Gabrielle Bellot’s “The Year of Breath” reflects on the Covid-19 pandemic and “the systematic eradication of Black and brown bodies like my own by ravenously racist cops.” Marked by the diversity of its contributor’s perspectives and the vibrancy of their prose, this anthology shines.