Description
As 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.
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