My Body Is a Book of Rules

From someone who was diagnosed with bipolar II and an anxiety disorder just after graduating from the University of Washington with a B.A. in English w/creative writing emphasis (2000) AND having taken several classes offered through the Indian Studies Department, I already felt some affinity with Elissa Washuta, although I am not Native American and in no way am appropriating her culture. I was even a research assistant for David Shields for a few years and he was my creative writing supervising professor for my senior year project. I didn't have a drinking problem, but it's clear in looking back that my undiagnosed bipolar disorder had caused me problems in some classes. My crutch was food. I was so struck by Ms. Washuta's brutal honesty and absolutely love the creative descriptions of drugs and the letter from the Univ of Maryland Health Center to the Mental Health Clinic at the UW is priceless (I also saw doctors and counselors there too), and exemplifies genius in my opinion. But how she organizes the book keeps the reader on the eractic trajectory that mimics her own. I highly recommend this book...to anyone who loves an incredible story, brilliantly told, about the constellation of mental illness, cultural identity and sexual abuse AND overcoming those obstacles.

I have a hard time writing a review because there aren't enough feelings and emotions to adequately describe what Elissa gives us in this book. For me, this book is the heart wrenching, gut turning story of identity. We see Elissa wrestle with identity in so many ways: what it is to be American Indian and how to represent and project that; a woman seeking physical and emotional nourishment; a story of new beginnings and old habits and how to reconcile the two. This is an intense read. You will read intimate details of the inner workings of Elissa's world. You will want to put the book down, pretend it doesn't exist. You will pick it up and read it. This book is an addiction, one that you have to ride out to the end. I'm scared to read it again. I know I will, but I don't know when I will be ready. I think part of the reason a reader can voraciously consume this book is because of the unconventional layout in which the words are presented. If you are expecting something conventional, you should turn away right now. This is smart, poignant, hard-hitting, straight-talking, and above all else, uncompromising.

Quality of book itself was good.Content of book, meh.

As other reviews/ reviewers have noted, My Body can topically be a difficult book to read (rape, illness, historical atrocities, modern prejudices, and the interconnectedness of all these forces on the author’s’ life). But in the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” And yet, and yet!, as (the internet says) Lao Tzu said, "All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small." This book that covers intense varieties of pain, victimhood, and confusion (from Latin confusio(n-), from the verb confundere ‘mingle together’) is simultaneously notable for its total clarity of tone, masterly sentence-to-sentence writing, and an easy-breezy play with a wide (and challenging) range of (mostly original, I would say) invented forms. Sometimes I find myself unexcited or unchallenged by Literature (reader blames herself, no one else; it's just a state I find myself in when my reading list needs a shake-up). From a craft standpoint and a humanistic one, too, Washuta's book is just the type of antidote/ prescription I find myself needing for a case of the Reading Blahs. I closed My Body with a sense of great possibility and inspiration to "keep on keeping on" with my own life struggles including the often-difficult task of empathizing with others.

This is an incredible memoir, and as another review wrote, it's not for the faint of heart. What is it then? An incredible insight into the blessing and, at times, the curse, of having a brain with fragile wiring. As someone who struggles with similar fragile wiring, I was so impressed by her creativity, her wit and wisdom, and her raw honesty. The manner in which she dances between topics and plays with structure was brilliant in that (I felt) it replicates what it feels like to have a mental illness. The structure itself felt truly comforting because it lacked the traditional linear or chronological flow. This memoir is both heartbreaking and hopeful. I am grateful to have met Washuta, and equally grateful that she dares to write such a beautiful book.

I will often refer to having visceral reactions to especially poignant or relatable storytelling, but to call this a gut-punch or a heartbreak would be a disservice to the all-encompassing and transformative feeling that rushed through my bloodstream at several points in this book. As someone who shares many experiences of medicine, identity, violence, and language with Washuta, I felt not only witnessed but healed by her articulation of living in so many of the spaces that people call "liminal" but are actually forever verging, unsettled, and unspoken.

It's like Elissa Washuta can see the inside of my mind. We're both bipolar substance abusers from the midatlantic. She just gets me. Its freaky. Anyways, thank you Elissa Washuta for inspiring me to enter adult life, and to try to have a future as a bipolar person. I have also watched every episode of law and order svu! all 19 seasons. i admire you. we also both went to catholic school.

My Body Is a Book of Rules is an unfinished book by a promising young writer. At times gimmicky and jumpy, the book weaves together the author's experience of being Native American, her rape and simultaneous deflowering, and her eventual bipolar disorder and treatment as a young adult. The author believes that these threads are obviously related but the book does not make the case persuasively and ends up being at times irrational. At its heart, the book is about a rape that the author did not acknowledge as rape for a long time, even going out with the perpetrator for a while after. The book then relates the process of coming to terms with the rape and the flurry of abusive physical relationships that follow. It was this part of the book that I really came to understand the psychology of acquaintance rape and the damage to self-esteem that it can inflict. How her rape fits into the long history of white men raping Native American women is unclear. Because the author herself does not look particularly Indian, because her ethnicity was not mentioned as an issue in any of her relationships, the connection is illogical. At one point, the book goes from discussing sex to talking abut how she learned about Lenni Lenape Indians in New Jersey (?). She is trying to juxtapose these two seemingly disparate items, but the author never succeeds in bringing them together. These are the types of non-sequitur that could have been edited out. The author herself in the final pages of the book acknowledges that her traumas are not her ancestor's traumas, and yet the book still tries to make the connection. I can understand how in the author’s experience of it, her being Native American is inextricably tied to being raped but the book just doesn’t make the case persuasively. This could have been done with a chat with an aunt or mom who also went through the same thing, but her immediate family is virtually absent from the book, and the author discusses the cases of distant ancestors (in clinical language) more than she talks about her relationship with her mother, suggesting the author is still processing some stuff. Prefacing the rape/deflowering and her mental breakdown is the astonishing fact of the author’s Catholic school education in dramatic contrast to her later promiscuity. And although there is a lot of discussion of what the author learned in Catholic school, this juxtaposition is not milked to its full possibility. There should be a full (short) chapter introducing this background but there is not. Told through journal entries, semi-fictionalized psychiatrist reports, lists of commandments, an academic essay on hooking up, Match.com profiles (with footnotes), encyclopedic entries of certain saints, psychiatric analyses of Kurt Cobain and Brittney Spears, the book switches between genres and theme, voices and topics and is at times a bit of a mess. In its mix of scholarly and personal writing, the book is reminiscent of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee or Lisa Kanae’s Sistah Tongue, but in the other books, the history of colonization and its connection to the present generation is more apparent. In Washuta’s book, the connection is a stretch. The back of the book describes My Body Is a Book of Rules like this: "As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain." This is a vague and misleading introduction. This book about a rape and its aftermath. The book would have been better written if it had known this and stuck with it.

This was a very different kind of autobiography than I am used to reading. This book contains several short essay-style chapters as well as a few other formats such as interviews, lists and a letter from Washuta's psychiatrist. I found it very engaging and would definitely recommend this book to others. *****However, I would advise anyone who is sensitive to the topic of rape and victim blaming to proceed with caution as there may be a few triggering pages.*****

This is an exceptional, brilliant, brave book that made me cry. I expected it to be a bit gimmicky due to the unusual story-telling methods - lists, interviews ect - but it never felt like Washuta was just writing in a different way for the sake of textual difference. There was always a point to the style/form she used. I feel like everyone should read this book.