BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Hysterical: A Memoir

    (By Elissa Bassist)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 24 MB (24,083 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 626 times
    Last checked 11 Hour ago!
    Author Elissa Bassist
    “Book Descriptions: Equal parts medical mystery, cultural criticism, and rallying cry, writer Elissa Bassist shares her journey to reclaim her authentic voice in a culture that doesn't listen to women.

    Between 2016 and 2018, Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical professionals for a variety of mysterious ailments. Bassist had what millions of American women had: pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, a psyche that didn’t make sense to mankind. But then an acupuncturist suggested some of her physical pain could be caged fury finding expression, and that treating her voice would treat the problem. It did.

    Growing up, Bassist's family, boyfriends, school, work, and television had the same expectation for a woman’s voice: less is more. She was called dramatic and insane for speaking her mind; she was accused of overreacting and playing victim for having unexplained physical pain; she was ignored or rebuked like women throughout history for using her voice “inappropriately” by expressing sadness or suffering or anger or joy.  

    Because of this, she said “yes” when she meant “no”; she didn’t tweet #MeToo; and she never spoke without fear of being "too emotional." So, she felt rage, but like a good woman, repressed it. In Hysterical, Bassist explains how girls and women internalize and perpetuate directives about their voice, making it hard to emote or “just speak up” and “burn down the patriarchy.” But her silence hurt more than anything she could ever say. Hysterical is a memoir of a voice lost and found, and a primer on new ways to think about a woman’s voice, where it’s being squashed and where it needs amplification. Bassist breaks her own silences and calls on others to do the same—to unmute their voice, listen to it above all others, and use it again without regret.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    She's Nice Though: Essays on Being Bad at Being Good

    ★★★★★

    Mia Mercado

    Book 1

    Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

    ★★★★★

    Maya Dusenbery

    Book 1

    Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning

    ★★★★★

    Claire Dederer

    Book 1

    Pretty Baby

    ★★★★★

    Chris Belcher

    Book 1

    Consent: A Memoir

    ★★★★★

    Jill Ciment

    Book 1

    Quietly Hostile: Essays

    ★★★★★

    Samantha Irby

    Book 1

    Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

    ★★★★★

    Rachel Aviv

    Book 1

    Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences

    ★★★★★

    Gila Pfeffer

    Book 1

    Adult Drama: And Other Essays

    ★★★★★

    Natalie Beach

    Book 1

    Do You Remember Being Born?

    ★★★★★

    Sean Michaels

    Book 1

    While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

    ★★★★★

    Meg Kissinger

    Book 1

    Lo Fi

    ★★★★★

    Liz Riggs

    Book 1

    The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out)

    ★★★★★

    Tina Nguyen

    Book 1

    Basura

    ★★★★★

    Sylvia Aguilar-Zéleny

    Book 1

    The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis

    ★★★★★

    Emma Bolden

    Book 1

    What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety

    ★★★★★

    Cole Kazdin

    Book 1

    The Lemon

    ★★★★★

    S.E. Boyd