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| The Reading Room |
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Thorpe Menn Awards Ceremony Speech
First, thank you to the AAUW and to the committee for the Thorpe Menn award. It's an honor to be
included in the company of these colleagues and an honor to be part of all the work that goes into
this and the commitment to literature that it stands for.
It's been two years since I finished the final edits on this book, My Other Body. People compare
writing a book to giving birth. I don't know about that. But publishing a book is a little like
volunteering to carry a two year old child on your hip for the rest of your natural life. That book is
yours to own up to -- not to mention to market -- as long as your name is on the spine. You can't
walk away from it and pretend like you never met. So you'd better love what you write. On the
whole, I'm happy to be carrying this story with me, though it is a sobering story.
It's been six years to the week that my sister was admitted to the hospital -- just a little over five
feet tall, five hundred and fifty pounds, nearly immobilized by her own body, and ravaged by
diseases and infections that she had learned to ignore as just a few more of her body's discomforts.
I miss my sister. There are conversations I want her in. There are things that would make her laugh.
I wrote this book because I wanted my sister back.
But that's not the whole story. And without the whole story, this book would have been a lie. I
suspect that a great many literary books are framed not by outlines or theory, but by the points
where the author can't live with the falsehoods she creates when she tries to exclude or manipulate
her story's details.
For a lot of women -- and men too -- the whole story of our lives includes fat and how our choices are
affected by it. The whole story includes despair and obsession and shame that are more crippling
than fat itself could ever be. For some of us, fat or thin, the whole story includes addictions or
disordered behaviors that we dread having discovered and that reinforce our ideas of ourselves as
failures. It includes the paralyzing belief that we are in some measure unfit for participation in our
own lives.
The whole story includes -- it has to include -- a way forward, out of those fears, into a richer life.
I crave, I long for stories and books that show how fear is conquered, in whatever small way. I want
to celebrate books that show characters standing up for their own and each other's dignity. We need
those books, because in real life we work so hard to render our fears invisible to each other.
We don't know the fears and doubts that others are battling. We do work hard to hide all of that.
But this means something powerful. It means that we can never know what smile, what word of
acceptance will give someone else a foothold into dignity and out of fear. We can never know how
our smallest or most careless kindness has written itself into someone else's story as the courage to
choose that richer life.
We think of stories as having beginnings and endings, and we think of the people we know as the
finished products of their lives so far. But this is an illusion. Our stories do not end, not even at the
covers of their books. We keep shaping our stories together, and when we're gone, our stories go
on; they shape the lives of those who have loved us.
My story is yet shaped by a sister who in so many ways brought me here.
I carry our story forward, here, in this moment between you and me. It's an honor to be here in your
company. Thank you.
included in the company of these colleagues and an honor to be part of all the work that goes into
this and the commitment to literature that it stands for.
It's been two years since I finished the final edits on this book, My Other Body. People compare
writing a book to giving birth. I don't know about that. But publishing a book is a little like
volunteering to carry a two year old child on your hip for the rest of your natural life. That book is
yours to own up to -- not to mention to market -- as long as your name is on the spine. You can't
walk away from it and pretend like you never met. So you'd better love what you write. On the
whole, I'm happy to be carrying this story with me, though it is a sobering story.
It's been six years to the week that my sister was admitted to the hospital -- just a little over five
feet tall, five hundred and fifty pounds, nearly immobilized by her own body, and ravaged by
diseases and infections that she had learned to ignore as just a few more of her body's discomforts.
I miss my sister. There are conversations I want her in. There are things that would make her laugh.
I wrote this book because I wanted my sister back.
But that's not the whole story. And without the whole story, this book would have been a lie. I
suspect that a great many literary books are framed not by outlines or theory, but by the points
where the author can't live with the falsehoods she creates when she tries to exclude or manipulate
her story's details.
For a lot of women -- and men too -- the whole story of our lives includes fat and how our choices are
affected by it. The whole story includes despair and obsession and shame that are more crippling
than fat itself could ever be. For some of us, fat or thin, the whole story includes addictions or
disordered behaviors that we dread having discovered and that reinforce our ideas of ourselves as
failures. It includes the paralyzing belief that we are in some measure unfit for participation in our
own lives.
The whole story includes -- it has to include -- a way forward, out of those fears, into a richer life.
I crave, I long for stories and books that show how fear is conquered, in whatever small way. I want
to celebrate books that show characters standing up for their own and each other's dignity. We need
those books, because in real life we work so hard to render our fears invisible to each other.
We don't know the fears and doubts that others are battling. We do work hard to hide all of that.
But this means something powerful. It means that we can never know what smile, what word of
acceptance will give someone else a foothold into dignity and out of fear. We can never know how
our smallest or most careless kindness has written itself into someone else's story as the courage to
choose that richer life.
We think of stories as having beginnings and endings, and we think of the people we know as the
finished products of their lives so far. But this is an illusion. Our stories do not end, not even at the
covers of their books. We keep shaping our stories together, and when we're gone, our stories go
on; they shape the lives of those who have loved us.
My story is yet shaped by a sister who in so many ways brought me here.
I carry our story forward, here, in this moment between you and me. It's an honor to be here in your
company. Thank you.
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