In the Body of the World: A Memoir of Cancer and Connection

by Eve Ensler

Overview

Playwright, author, and activist Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the female body—how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent much of her life disassociated from her own body—a disconnection brought on by her father's sexual abuse and her mother's remoteness. "Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the Earth," she writes, "I could not feel or know their pain."

But Ensler is shocked out of her distance. While working in the Congo, she is shattered to encounter the horrific rape and violence inflicted on the women there. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and through months of harrowing treatment, she is forced to become first and foremost a body—pricked, punctured, cut, scanned. It is then that all distance is erased. As she connects her own illness to the devastation of the earth, her life force to the resilience of humanity, she is finally, fully—and gratefully—joined to the body of the world.

Unflinching, generous, and inspiring, Ensler's In the Body of the World calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250043979
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.23(w) x 7.78(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Eve Ensler is an internationally bestselling author and an award-winning playwright whose works include The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, Insecure at Last, and I Am an Emotional Creature, since adapted for the stage as Emotional Creature. She is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised more than $90 million for local groups and activists, and inspired the global action One Billion Rising. Ensler lives in Paris and New York City.

Table of Contents

Divided 1

The Beginning of the End, or In Your Liver 10

Dr. Deb, or Congocancer 14

Somnolence 18

Cancer Town 21

Dr. Handsome 24

What We Don't Know Going into Surgery 26

This Is Where You Will Cross the Uji River 31

Two Questions 35

Uterus = Hysteria 36

Falling, or Congo Stigmata 41

Lu 45

Here's What's Gone 47

The Stoma 49

How'd I Get It? 54

Circumambulating 58

Ice Chips 61

Patient 65

The Rupture/The Gulf Spill 68

Becoming Someone Else 74

Beware of Getting the Best 78

Stages/5.2B 84

Infusion Suite 90

Arts and Crafts 93

The Room with a Tree 99

A Buzz Cut 106

Getting Port 108

The Chemo Isn't for You 110

Tara, Kali, and Sue 115

Crowd Chemo 119

The Obstruction, or How Tree Saved Me 123

I Was That Girl Who Was Supposed to Be Dead, or How Pot Saved Me Later 126

Riding the Lion 133

Chemo Day Five 134

On the Couch Next to Me 137

I Love Your Hair, or The Last Time I Saw My Mother 141

It Was a Beach, I Think 147

Shit 149

Rada 152

Death and Tami Taylor 157

A Burning Meditation on Love 162

My Mother Dies 170

De-Ported 178

Live by the Vagina, Die by the Vagina 181

Farting for Cindy 186

It Wasn't a Foreboding 190

Congo Incontinent 195

Leaking 198

She Will Live 199

Sue 203

Joy 204

Mother 207

Second Wind 210

Editorial Reviews

Unforgettable...A story of stark, inspiring, often confrontational honesty. Ensler's message is clear: We can face the worst life has in store for us and create, even in the face of terror, a life of meaning and joy.” —The New York Times Book Review

“An intense, riveting memoir...not an easy book to read, but a necessary book to read for its fierce, passionate commitment to making the world a safe place for women.” —The Boston Globe

“Without a sliver of exaggeration, In the Body of the World is a soul-stretching, life-changing read.” —Maria Popova, Brainpickings

“Astonishing.” —Mary Oliver

“A masterpiece. Ensler has accomplished the impossible: weaving together huge, bold, world-changing ideas with beautiful writing, amazing metaphors, and original structure. Truly one of the most courageous and original works of our time.” —Naomi Klein

“Ensler has written a profound and vulnerable book, full of tenderness and strength. I was amazed by the clarity of her vision and the power of her message about the body and self. This book isn't meant only for patients; it is meant for anyone whose life has intersected with illness—in short, for all of us.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee

“This book is a ride, a river ride through rapids and depths and shallows, dried-up eddies, whirlpools and torrents, crystal-clear pools and the vast ocean at the end. What a thrill and what a spear through the heart. I am astounded by the honesty and clarity of each word.” —Elizabeth Lesser

“I dare anyone to read In the Body of the World without crying, without crying out, without getting up and rising to this beautiful broken world with awe and gratitude. There is no pity here, only the raw force of courage in the face of fear and violence, and the healing grace of honesty.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“Eve Ensler incarnates the pain of the women in the Congo, victims of rape and torture; and of the Earth, victim of so much desecration. Her heart and body are broken, her anger is like fire, and the passion of her writing rattles your soul. This is true literature and true activism.” —Isabel Allende

“Eve Ensler's memoir is not only wild and raw and incredibly important, it's also that rarest of achievements—a compulsively readable, stunningly rendered work of art that delivers hope and truth, challenge and solace, sometimes simultaneously.” —Alexandra Fuller

From the Publisher

In this extraordinarily riveting, graphic story of survival, Ensler, an accomplished playwright (The Vagina Monologues) and activist in international groups such as V-Day, which works to end violence against women, depicts her shattering battle with uterine cancer. Having felt estranged from her body for a lifetime, and been molested as a girl by her father and enthralled by alcohol and promiscuity early on, Ensler as a playwright was seized with a political awareness of the dire violence committed against women across the globe. At the age of 57, she was blindsided when she discovered that her own health emergency mimicked the ones that women were enduring in the developing countries she had visited: "the cancer of cruelty, the cancer of greed... the cancer of buried trauma." Her narrative, she writes, is like a CAT scan, "a roving examination—capturing images," recording in minute, raw detail the ordeals she underwent over seven months. These include her crazed, "hysterical" response to the diagnosis and her treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., as well as extensive surgery, chemo, radiation, and caring by a "posse" of companions in misery, like her estranged sister, Lu, and far-flung friends such as Mama C, the head of the City of Joy women's center in the Congo. Her anatomy of the invasion of women's bodies is often difficult to read; the lesson she learns is that in order to heal, she has to submit her body to a renewed source of love and joy. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Owing to sexual abuse as a child, the author of The Vagina Monologues initially felt no connection to her own body, which changed when she witnessed mass rape in the Congo.

Library Journal

To escape repeated rape by her father, Eve Ensler learned to disconnect from her body. “Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the earth, I could not feel or know their pain,” says the author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES. This disconnect led her to promiscuity and alcoholism, but it also led her to become an activist in the fight to end violence against women. In 2010, Ensler was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Ensler reads with the rhythms and cadence of an angry, passionate poet, intense and fully aware of the devastating irony of that diagnosis. Forced to deal with her body through extensive surgeries, chemo, radiation, and pain, she begins the healing process, slowly reconnecting to herself and the earth. Raw, unrelenting, no-holds-barred listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

MAY 2013 - AudioFile

To escape repeated rape by her father, Eve Ensler learned to disconnect from her body. “Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the earth, I could not feel or know their pain,” says the author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES. This disconnect led her to promiscuity and alcoholism, but it also led her to become an activist in the fight to end violence against women. In 2010, Ensler was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Ensler reads with the rhythms and cadence of an angry, passionate poet, intense and fully aware of the devastating irony of that diagnosis. Forced to deal with her body through extensive surgeries, chemo, radiation, and pain, she begins the healing process, slowly reconnecting to herself and the earth. Raw, unrelenting, no-holds-barred listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

MAY 2013 - AudioFile