Book #13: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

I read about this book when I read Ann Patchett's memoir Truth and Beauty about her deep friendship with Lucy Grealy a few years ago. I remember her description of the book and it sounding so interesting that I really, really wanted to read it. However, there wasn't a copy at our library at the time, and then I forgot about it. However, now that I'm all into e-audiobooks, this one became available to me and I listened to it on my phone over the last week. Hooray! I love the feeling of getting a good book that I've been meaning to read for years.

Lucy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in her face when she was nine years old, and had to undergo years of treatment and surgeries afterwards to survive the cancer. As part of that treatment, she had to have half of her jaw removed. She wrote this memoir about her experiences dealing with the aftermath of that removal--mostly coming to grips with the fact that now she was ugly and would forevermore be facing the taunts of her classmates and groups of drunken men. It seems quite clear through the book that the cancer was less traumatic for her than how she had to come to grips with her new appearance, and therefore identity, after the cancer was gone. The whole book seems to be asking the question of "What is identity?" and is pondering the connection between our self-esteem and our beliefs about our appearance and beauty and our true identity. She says on at least one occasion that her face was her self, and since her face was so mutilated and consistently belittled and stared at, she had a hard time understanding or appreciating herself.

It was wrenching to read about her experiences going through cancer as a child. Grealy was brutally honest about her family situation (sometimes strained relationships) and the flaws of her parents (who left her to deal with a lot of her treatment completely alone), but not overly dramatic about it. She was also brutally honest about her desires for love and attention, and about her immature reactions to things like her cancer treatments (she was excited to be sent to the hospital, even knowing that she'd be in a lot of pain, because she got to be treated like she was special). It definitely made me sad to imagine her going through these treatments by herself and dealing with that pain alone. She also talked about how her mother's admonishments of "don't cry" affected her ability to deal with pain and respond appropriately. Grealy did an MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and it shows--there are some beautiful, well-written passages throughout where she notices small details and draws them out for you. I thought this was a very interesting memoir about her experiences, and I think I will be thinking about her message of appearance vs. identity for a while to come.