"Nervosa" by Hayley Gold
Dec. 21st, 2023 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherNervosa, by Hayley Gold. A comics memoir about her experiences with Anorexia nervosa. Published 2023.
I do not know how I feel about this book. It's a harrowing read that reminds me of "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy, in that it's unrelenting and there is no easy resolution. Unlike that book, this is in comics format which I find more appealing and easier (somehow emotionally) to read.
Gold has severe anorexia, a bully for a father, a high intelligence, and very few positive relationships.
I loved the use of color. Sometimes the text was too small for my eyes. There were a few ableist slurs (moron, r-slur). The poetry framing each section did nothing for me but I'm not a poetry person. I liked the pressed flower illustrations but the font identifying them was impossible to read.
Where the book succeeds the most (for me) is in revealing the horrors of so-called treatment for eating disorders, which serve to make things worse for our narrator. To put teenage girls with ED together in one unit allows them to share tips and tricks, to normalize their behaviors, to compete with each other. When the staff has them go around and talk about their progress, this serves to publicly shame them in front of their peers. Hayley is at one point not allowed to draw (a positive coping technique). Instead of eating tasty food, they are given foul NuBasics drinks. Staff are at turns indifferent, incompetent, and cruel. Doctors are dehumanizing and one of them assaults her. Her peers tell her, what is the point of reporting the assault? They don't believe us anyway. The girls' bodies and behaviors are under constant surveillance by mis-trusted people.
In this carceral environment, is it any surprise that the girls try to subvert authority? Of course they are going to double down on behaviors that give them a sense of control.
I would recommend this for people working in the field and those interested in graphic medicine, and I would say that it's best for a mature reader who can contextualize some of Gold's writing. For example, she's crabby and hates people, but lacks the insight or distance to realize that this is because she's under-fed and that (at the end of the book, now in her 20s) she is finally starting puberty. She doesn't seem to understand how to separate herself from her parents (by which I mean, drawing boundaries), which is difficult for many people but especially difficult if you have a severe illness and may be financially dependent on them (she doesn't talk about money except in terms of insurance).
"Lighter than my Shadow" is a better graphic memoir on the same topic. In both books, competent treatment for this difficult disease is elusive.
Book was borrowed from my excellent local public library system.
I do not know how I feel about this book. It's a harrowing read that reminds me of "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy, in that it's unrelenting and there is no easy resolution. Unlike that book, this is in comics format which I find more appealing and easier (somehow emotionally) to read.
Gold has severe anorexia, a bully for a father, a high intelligence, and very few positive relationships.
I loved the use of color. Sometimes the text was too small for my eyes. There were a few ableist slurs (moron, r-slur). The poetry framing each section did nothing for me but I'm not a poetry person. I liked the pressed flower illustrations but the font identifying them was impossible to read.
Where the book succeeds the most (for me) is in revealing the horrors of so-called treatment for eating disorders, which serve to make things worse for our narrator. To put teenage girls with ED together in one unit allows them to share tips and tricks, to normalize their behaviors, to compete with each other. When the staff has them go around and talk about their progress, this serves to publicly shame them in front of their peers. Hayley is at one point not allowed to draw (a positive coping technique). Instead of eating tasty food, they are given foul NuBasics drinks. Staff are at turns indifferent, incompetent, and cruel. Doctors are dehumanizing and one of them assaults her. Her peers tell her, what is the point of reporting the assault? They don't believe us anyway. The girls' bodies and behaviors are under constant surveillance by mis-trusted people.
In this carceral environment, is it any surprise that the girls try to subvert authority? Of course they are going to double down on behaviors that give them a sense of control.
I would recommend this for people working in the field and those interested in graphic medicine, and I would say that it's best for a mature reader who can contextualize some of Gold's writing. For example, she's crabby and hates people, but lacks the insight or distance to realize that this is because she's under-fed and that (at the end of the book, now in her 20s) she is finally starting puberty. She doesn't seem to understand how to separate herself from her parents (by which I mean, drawing boundaries), which is difficult for many people but especially difficult if you have a severe illness and may be financially dependent on them (she doesn't talk about money except in terms of insurance).
"Lighter than my Shadow" is a better graphic memoir on the same topic. In both books, competent treatment for this difficult disease is elusive.
Book was borrowed from my excellent local public library system.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 07:11 pm (UTC)Wow howdy that sounds grim. Thanks for reading so I don't have to.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 07:48 am (UTC)