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"A candid, autobiographical scrapbook from a young woman navigating manic depression.…A fever dream of darkly personal memories and musings from the shadowy corners of sexual violence and mental illness."—Kirkus ReviewAs 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 aren’t threatening her life, they’re 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 seventeen formally inventive chapters, Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitan’s mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of Law & 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.This debut memoir from the independent publisher Red Hen Press isn't for the faint of heart. Washuta's honest and lyrical language as well as her subject matter — her struggles with bipolar disorder and coping with the effects of rape — will gut you, but it's the rawness of this work that makes it worth reading. Washuta's form, including revised psychiatrists' notes, annotated research papers on the use of the term "hooking up," summaries of prescription medications, and a Match.com profile, is inventive and invites the reader into the author's chaotic brain. The book perfectly articulates the difficulties navigating the path toward adulthood while coping with trauma and mental illness.—Melissa Duclos for BustleFeatured in Seattle Reading List: https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/a-big-seattle-reading-list-of-washington-books#fiction
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.
