Ladyparts: A Memoir

by Deborah Copaken

Overview

A frank, witty, and dazzlingly written memoir of one woman trying to keep it together while her body falls apart—from the “brilliant mind” (Michaela Coel, creator of I May Destroy You) behind Shutterbabe
 
“The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read and an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing.”—Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE

I’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces.
 
Twenty years after her iconic memoir Shutterbabe, Deborah Copaken is at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying—literally—on sexism’s battlefield as she scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs into a glass container before heading off to the hospital . . . in an UberPool.

Ladyparts is Copaken’s irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, the story of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, healthcare Frogger, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father’s death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one atop the other, which provide the book’s narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. Copaken bounces back from each bum body part, finds workarounds for every setback—she transforms her home into a commune to pay rent, sells her soul for health insurance, turns FBI informant when her sexual harasser gets a presidential appointment—but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.

Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, quintessentially American throughout, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984855480
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	218,371
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Deborah Copaken is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, and she was also a TV writer on Emily in Paris, a performer (The Moth, etc.), and an Emmy Award-winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match, among other publications. Her column, “When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist,” was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Read an Excerpt

ONE

Fireworks

July 2, 2017

I’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not metaphor. They are actual pieces. Plum-sized, beet-colored, with the consistency and sheen of chicken liver, three of them have shot out of me like shells from a cannon.

I am bleeding out. But my brain, starved of blood and in shock at the sight of so much of it, cannot process this information. Instead, I’ve become convinced that the ordnance sliding around my bathroom floor are my internal organs, which I must rescue so someone can put them back inside me.

I head to the kitchen to hunt for Tupperware. Not just any Tupperware. The glass kind. Heaven forbid my liver and kidney should come into contact with BPAs. It does not occur to me, in my befuddled state, that had my internal organs actually fallen from my body, I would not have the pulse with which to rummage in my kitchen cabinet in search of a container to store them.

It is Saturday night—no, now Sunday morning, just after midnight—of the July Fourth weekend, 2017. Pads and underwear have become useless against these pyrotechnics, so it’s just me and my bathrobe, hemorrhaging. Outside, bootleg fireworks are erupting into the sky. Inside, gravity has forced another palm-sized chunk to plunge—splat!—onto the kitchen floor. And the rocket’s red glare, indeed: Happy Independence Day to me! (Added bonus, I’m mid-divorce.) I scoop up the large mass and put it in the glass container with the others.

With the blobs now safely stored in carcinogen-free glass on the top shelf of my fridge—I’ve seen enough medical procedurals to know about the importance, when transporting human organs, of picnic coolers—I call the answering service for my surgeon, who three weeks earlier had removed my cervix. This post-op emergency, which I’m not yet prepared to call an emergency, is unusual. In fact, of all trachelectomies—that’s the clinical name for cervix removal—performed in the U.S., only a small percentage result in “vaginal cuff dehiscence”: the clinical name for uh-oh, the stitches where they sewed up the top of your vaginal canal have come undone, and now you’re a blood clot howitzer.

I am twelve hours, without medical intervention, from my own death. Possibly less.

At this point, however, I know none of this. Neither the number of hours I have left nor the technical name for what’s happening. I just know I’m exhausted and bleeding profusely. That I’m still deep in the weeds of recovering from major surgery. That I’d already gone to the emergency room near family court six days after surgery, after nearly passing out from pain while representing myself at a custody hearing, but the hospital had sent me home, saying everything looked fine.

I am loath to cry wolf again. But my apartment looks like a crime scene. So I’m crying medium-sized dog, possibly rabid. Alas, no one from the hospital is calling me back, so I’m crying into the void anyway. I call the answering service again. I text them a photo of one of the masses in the palm of my hand for size context. Nada.

I feel like medicine’s needy girlfriend, ghosted by the hospital.

It has now magically jumped from midnight to 1:30 in the morning. Like a Truffaut film. Qu’est-ce que c’est, degueulasse? What is disgusting? I mean, for starters, the bathroom floor.

Part of me can’t help but wonder if all of these bloody missiles are, in fact, metaphor: the expulsion of decades of marital sludge. But while I am grateful for my escape from a toxic, lonely marriage, I’ve recently been as alone as I’ve ever been, as lonely as I’ve ever felt. My eldest has been living with his girlfriend in Bangkok, where he’s teaching English. My youngest is away at summer camp. My middle one has been in the Middle East, so I’ve been walking the dog and doing the dishes and taking out the trash and lugging laundry back and forth from the communal laundry room in the basement on my own.

None of these tasks are on the list of acceptable activities on the hospital handout they give you when they kick you out the morning after surgery and tell you to rest. But having been recently downsized, I can’t afford the added cost of a home health aide. Or, frankly, food or shelter. Aside from the few freelance gigs I’ve been able to cobble together from bed, I now have zero income combined with an extra $2,314.20 a month in COBRA fees, which has always struck me as one of the more insulting cosmic ironies of losing a job in America: Bye! Have a nice life! Here’s zero months of severance plus an extra rent’s worth of healthcare costs.

The rest of the night becomes fuzzy, as I slip in and out of consciousness, so I’ll just mention the scenes I do remember in the order I think they occurred. This is not me trying to sound postmodern. It’s just the jump-cut way in which I recall them, devoid of the normal transitions that streamline a narrative.

“Hey, sweetie, sorry to wake you . . .” I finally wake my sleeping daughter, feeling guilty about so doing. She’s just arrived home from Tel Aviv, after many layovers and no sleep. Birthright wasn’t around when I was her age, so my first trip to Israel was also my first assignment as a photojournalist, to cover the first intifada. Rocks and CNN trucks. The boys would always wait around for the trucks to show up before throwing their rocks. McLuhan was right. The medium is always the message. What are these blobs trying to transmit to me?

“I think my kidney fell out,” I say to my daughter, clutching my mystery masses, “so I might have to go to the hospital. But you stay here with Lucas and walk him in the morning.” Lucas is our dog. Like all dogs, he hates fireworks. To self-soothe, he’s been sitting on my face.

My daughter’s bleary eyes widen. She is staring at the contents of my Tupperware container.

The crack of fireworks. Technicolor bursts outside the window. The dog barks. The world spins.

“Mom! Oh my god! That’s not your kidney. If it were your kidney, you’d be dead.” She examines the blobs, unsqueamish. She’s premed, studying neuroscience. “I think they’re giant blood clots,” she says. “We have to get you to the hospital. Now.”

“I’m tired. And no one’s calling me back. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow.”

She gets up and notes the pools of blood on the bathroom floor. In my bed. Down the hallway. In the kitchen near the refrigerator. I did my best to clean up the mess until I ran out of paper towels. “Are you kidding? Let’s go. I’m calling 911.”

“No! Absolutely not. We can’t afford it.” I’m currently living off the remains of my meager 401K, facing a huge tax penalty for its early withdrawal. After months of illness followed by major surgery with copays and monthly COBRA fees, I have just under $3,000 in cash reserves left and zero credit cards. I’ve read too many cautionary tales of surprise bills as high as $8,000 for ambulance transport. I’m hemorrhaging enough already.

“Fine,” she says, “call an Uber.”

I remain firm. “No. I’ll take the subway. And you’re not coming with me. You have to stay here with the dog.”

She doesn’t listen. I am being pulled outside by the arm.

Streetlamps. Darkness. I smell pot.

“No one says pot anymore,” says my daughter. “It’s weed. Call an Uber. Now!” The numbers 1:43 a.m. atop the smiles of my three sun-kissed children on the face of my phone. I search for the white U inside the little black square, remembering that 143, according to Mr. Rogers, equals I love you. Funny how that stuff stays. I=1; love=4; you=3. It took me a while to figure out the code.

“I love you,” I tell my daughter. UberPool is half the price of UberX, so I choose that. Your driver will be Faraj. How many other passengers could Faraj possibly have at 1:43 in the morning? None, as it will turn out. If I live, I can use the money I’ll save to replenish our supply of paper towels.

My daughter squeezes my hand. “I love you, too.”

More fireworks. It feels like we’re in a movie. I’d rather be in bed.

My daughter to the driver: “Yes, it’s an emergency!”

Warm blood. Lots of it. Under me. On the seat of the Uber, down my legs, pooling in my shoes. An uber pool in an UberPool. I feel awful for the mess my body has unleashed. An apology to Faraj.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Just go. God bless.” Two decades earlier, when my water had broken all over the floor of a taxi, the driver had spoken those exact words. Don’t worry. Just go. God bless.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Preface xiii

Part I Vagina 1

1 Fireworks 3

Part II Uterus 15

2 Lunch with Nora, Freds 17

3 That Clear Blue Morning 25

4 Lunch with Nora, East Hampton 33

5 Empathy 37

6 Escape 46

7 Lunch with Nora, E.A.T. 52

8 Where's the Husband? 65

Part III Breast 79

9 Landslide 81

10 Chiaroscuro 105

11 Yes, and… 122

12 Health Today 139

13 In Flagrante Delicto 152

14 You Won the Lottery! 162

Part IV Heart 169

15 Inwood 171

16 Money 187

17 At the Still Point of the Turning World 204

18 Bad Judgment 215

19 Unrequited 225

20 The Church for Wayward Hearts 234

21 Lunch with Ken 243

Part V Cervix 255

22 Kind of a Tinder Date and Kind of Not 257

23 Durkheim 266

24 Public Relations 275

25 Private Relations 284

26 On-ramp 290

27 Younger 295

28 ENFP 300

29 Little Buddha 307

30 Bloody Mother's Day 313

31 Hospitals Are Not My Thing 319

32 My Day in Court (My Afternoon in Hospital) 332

Part VI Brain 343

33 Empty Brain 345

34 #MeToo 366

35 Cognitive Health 381

36 Fuck Your Dumb Fire 390

Part VII Lungs 401

37 Make a Wish 403

38 The Cost of Oxygen 422

39 Fireworks Redux 427

Acknowledgments 439

Notes 443

Editorial Reviews

06/07/2021

Copaken (Shutterbabe), a contributing writer at the Atlantic, returns to memoir in this often flimsy tragicomedy of all the ways a woman can fall apart. Structuring the work as an inventory of body parts (uterus, cervix, heart), Copaken tells war stories of ailments (including a near-fatal hysterectomy), divorce, sexual harassment, and literal battles as a combat photographer in the ’80s to investigate the complicated relationship between her body and the patriarchal world she inhabits. She writes heartfelt tributes to the people who mentored her—including the late Nora Ephron, who used “the most humiliating parts of herself... as her superpower”—and skillfully explores the roots of her own emotional undoing, exacerbated by medical bills and her father’s death in 2008. While funny and tender, the work’s tone is frustratingly inconsistent; Copaken can careen from being urgent at one moment to deeply indulgent the next, while some anecdotes hit with a thud, as with a story about a fight with her now ex-husband in which she “strained vocal cords until they broke,” which, Copaken offhandedly explains, was particularly tragic because she planned to perform a live storytelling at the 92nd Street Y later that day, undermining the tension almost completely. The tangle of platitudes yields an amorphous, rushed-feeling narrative. Copaken takes a fresh approach to difficult topics, but the delivery is lacking. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read and an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing: How we tell our stories is just as important—if not more so—as the plot twists we experience.”—Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“A brilliant mind and a really brilliant impressive and quite shocking life.”—Michaela Coel, creator of I May Destroy You

“Terrifying, enraging, heartbreakingly funny—I recommend it for everyone I know, but most of all to the men. We know almost nothing about the women we love, their bodies, and their struggles. Don’t look away. Read this book.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less

“Ladyparts is, quite simply, a beautiful book. Equal part harrowing and hilarious, enraging and heartwarming, it’s a memoir unlike any other. It will open your eyes to what it means to be female in a male world, older in a society built around youth worship—or just on the wrong side of variance when the lottery of genes and life doesn’t turn in your favor. And it will do it all while making you laugh, cry, and scream in turn. I couldn’t put it down.”—Maria Konnikova, The New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Bluff and The Confidence Game
 
“Ladyparts is a first-rate example of the contemporary memoir: harrowing, sad, funny, revelatory, true. Were you to misconstrue the title, you might think this was all simply anatomy, which would be fine, but as with all the best memoirs what this work really anatomizes is how it all feels—in the mind, in the soul, and in the nick of time. Copaken’s memoir is poignant, necessary, and very rewarding.”—Rick Moody, author of The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony
 
“Reading this terrific book makes you feel like you’re Deborah Copaken’s pal, and lucky that you’re getting to hang out. She lives life with gusto and resilience, appreciates her good luck, learns from her rotten luck, nails the villains along the way––and chronicles it all with breathtaking honesty and screwball good humor as she zigzags through middle age in the general direction of wisdom and contentment.”—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland

“A fierce, caustic, joyful, and deeply courageous account of what it means to go through life in a female body, this book (like women ourselves) is so much greater than the sum of its parts, yet each part, and each page, is truly phenomenal.”—Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls & Sex

“The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read, but also one that provides an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing: How we tell our stories is just as important—if not more so—as the plot twists we experience.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“Utterly vital. Ladyparts enraged and amused me in equal measure. Deborah Copaken shows what it means to barely survive beyond the hallowed slice of privilege, where moving through the world in a woman’s body can be dangerous, absurd, frustrating, beautiful, and sometimes all at once.This book howls for women in a world that too often only allows us a whisper.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and What We’ve Lost Is Nothing

“This book is a must-read for anyone who knows a woman, loves a woman, or is a woman.”—Katherine Schwarzenegger, New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Forgiveness: Inspiring Stories from Those Who Have Overcome the Unforgivable

From the Publisher

07/01/2021

In her newest work, Copaken (The Red Book; Between Here and April) recounts key moments from her battles with multiple illnesses and their treatments. The narrative picks up just after the publication of Copaken's 2001 memoir Shutterbabe, after which she starts a writing career that becomes more precarious when journalism jobs begin to vanish in the 2010s. When Copaken becomes ill, she needs treatment that forces her to navigate the United States health care system, with inadequate insurance coverage and unstable finances. Then her marriage begins to crumble, and she must figure out divorce, dating, and raising children as a single mother. Copaken's strain is palpable as setbacks pile up; she's constantly having to hustle to the next job, doctor's appointment, or freelance gig. She also struggles with career disillusionment and is sexually harassed at one of her workplaces. Copaken manages to overcome the obstacles and achieve her own success; she lands TV writing opportunities and spends meaningful time with her friends and children. Copaken's memoir ends with her experience during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Written in a diary-like format, her memoir includes the occasional photograph. VERDICT A searing indictment of capitalism, the gig economy, and the U.S. medical system—all recounted with a sense of dark humor. Copaken's latest will engage readers of feminist memoirs.—Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Library Journal

2021-05-28
A bestselling author and former war photographer chronicles a decade of personal traumas by examining the malfunctioning body parts associated with each new upheaval.

Copaken, author of both fiction and nonfiction, reflects on personal crises by connecting bodily scars and their roles in her life. She begins with the graphic story of how, in the middle of a divorce, she suffered a ‘ “vaginal cuff dehiscence’: the clinical name for uh-oh, the stitches where they sewed up the top of your vaginal canal have come undone, and now you’re a blood clot howitzer.” The closing image of that section—in a hospital, “bleeding body on a slab, arms spread, wrists bound”—establishes the primary textual metaphor of the suffering female body. The author then explores other afflicted body parts and the troubles that dominated her life. In discussing her uterus, for example, she recalls how a hysterectomy coincided with both the end of her marriage and the death of her mentor and friend Nora Ephron. This was followed by a breast lump and the financial problems caused by marital separation. By 2014, at age 48, after she lost a job and started to date again, Copaken developed the heart palpitations doctors diagnose as PVCs. A few years later, a diagnosis of precancerous cervical lesions put a pause on a newly flourishing romantic life that included sympathetic younger men. The string of overwhelmingly bad luck continued into 2020, when the author contracted Covid-19 while trying to manage a urinary tract infection. Throughout this often overly detailed, highly informative, photographically illustrated memoir, Copaken uses her misfortunes to comment on, among other issues, corporate policies that force working women/mothers out of jobs; income inequality; female sexual harassment; and the many complications of the American unemployment system. The result is a conceptually unique narrative from a talented author that is sometimes undercut by informational excess.

Overlong but sharp and funny and always extremely candid.

Kirkus Reviews