NOTE: This title ships directly from our distributor. It will be available for self-pickup after 11/12/20.
In My Body Is a Book of Rules, Elissa Washuta corrals the synaptic gymnastics of her teeming bipolar brain, interweaving pop culture with neurobiology and memories of sexual trauma to tell the story of her fight to calm her aching mind and slip beyond the tormenting cycles of memory.
Elissa Washuta, a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, was born in New Jersey and now lives in Seattle. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington in 2009 and has been the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Award, a Potlatch Fund Native Arts Grant, a 4Culture Grant, and a Made at Hugo House Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Third Coast. She is an adviser and lecturer in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. My Body Is a Book of Rules is her first book.
"I have nothing but admiration for My Body is a Book of Rules, the shimmering new autobiography by Elissa Washuta: Open, ruthless, and more self-critical than any other non-fiction writer I've read recently. The book is both dark and hilarious, sometimes in the same sentence. Even when the events of the narrative seem to repeat themselves, it isn't an editorial oversight or sloppy writing; the repetitions are signals of what matters, the writer picking them up again, holding them at a different angle, searching for new answers. It feels honest and intimate. Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts: "I do not yet understand the relationship between writing and happiness, or writing and holding." Washuta writes with the same urgency and fiery curiosity. A gift for those who appreciate a good autobiography and fine, precise writing."
--Tin House Magazine
