What do you think?
Rate this book
You Feel So Mortal: Essays on the Body
Feet, bras, autopsies, hair―Peggy Shinner takes an honest, unflinching look at all of them in You Feel So Mortal , a collection of searing and witty essays about the her own body, female and Jewish; those of her parents, the bodies she came from; and the collective body, with all its historical, social, and political implications. What, she asks, does this whole mess of bones, muscles, organs, and soul mean? Searching for answers, she turns her keen narrative sense to body image, gender, ethnic history, and familial legacy, exploring what it means to live in our bodies and to leave them behind.
Over the course of twelve essays, Shinner holds a mirror up to the complex desires, fears, confusions, and mysteries that shape our bodily perceptions. Driven by the collision between herself and the larger world, she examines her feet through the often-skewed lens of history to understand what makes them, in the eyes of some, decidedly Jewish; considers bras, breasts, and the storied skills of the bra fitter; asks, from the perspective of a confused and grieving daughter, what it means to cut the body open; and takes a reeling time-trip through myth, culture, and history to look at women’s hair in ancient Rome, Laos, France, Syria, Cuba, India, and her own past. Some pieces investigate the body under emotional or physical duress, while others use the body to consider personal heritage and legacy. Throughout, Shinner writes with elegance and assurance, weaving her wide-ranging thoughts into a firm and fascinating fabric.
Turning the category of body books on, well, its ear, You Feel So Mortal offers a probing view of our preoccupation with the body that is both idiosyncratic and universal, leaving us with the deep satisfaction of our shared humanity.
Over the course of twelve essays, Shinner holds a mirror up to the complex desires, fears, confusions, and mysteries that shape our bodily perceptions. Driven by the collision between herself and the larger world, she examines her feet through the often-skewed lens of history to understand what makes them, in the eyes of some, decidedly Jewish; considers bras, breasts, and the storied skills of the bra fitter; asks, from the perspective of a confused and grieving daughter, what it means to cut the body open; and takes a reeling time-trip through myth, culture, and history to look at women’s hair in ancient Rome, Laos, France, Syria, Cuba, India, and her own past. Some pieces investigate the body under emotional or physical duress, while others use the body to consider personal heritage and legacy. Throughout, Shinner writes with elegance and assurance, weaving her wide-ranging thoughts into a firm and fascinating fabric.
Turning the category of body books on, well, its ear, You Feel So Mortal offers a probing view of our preoccupation with the body that is both idiosyncratic and universal, leaving us with the deep satisfaction of our shared humanity.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
4 people are currently reading
610 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 23, 2022
Peggy Shinner is Jewish, lesbian, an orphan and lives in Chicago. The texture of Shinner’s essays is woven around these central themes, like ribbons around maypoles. While none of the essays claims to be about specifically about these things, they pervade the work, often leavening serious discussion with humour.
The subtitle of You Feel so Mortal is Essays on the Body, but it’s not so much the elements of bodies that she writes about (feet, noses, aging) as the pictures she draws of people and relationships that will stay with me.
Much of what she writes is about being Jewish, in Chicago, at different times of her own life and the lives of her parents. In her first story, ‘Family Feet’, the tone starts out light and funny - ‘I have, according to a dubious assemblage of pundits, propagandists and pseudoscientists, Jewish feet. What I thought was familial is, in the eyes of some, tribal. My feet are flat. They turn out.’ – to serious, as she gives examples of racist stereotypes of Jewish bodies from Medieval times to Nazi Germany
She uses similar shifts from light to serious in ‘Elective’, about Jewish noses and her own nose job at age sixteen like the other teenage Jewish girls to ‘correct’ their ‘defective’ Jewish noses; and in the Fitting(s) where her account of the humiliations of having Bras fitted morphs into a discussion of breasts and breast cancer, then back to the fitter and final purchase of five well-fitting bras, now a business transaction, all intimacy and embarrassment set aside. Her mental counting of breasts in the fitting room brought me up short:
Is it possible to talk about bras without talking about breasts? I count them up. I have two. Ann has one, N. has one, S has one (although she plans on two after her treatment is done), my mother, when she died (of something else) had one, my grandmother (also dead of something else) one, B. (diagnosed two months after Ann and now dead) one. To the four of us and our six breasts, N. had said, raising a glass of wine in a toast shortly after Ann’s mastectomy. Two couples, four friends, six breasts.’
Shinner is lesbian and has a lover, not a partner, who is central in several stories - about her family, their difficulty in accepting Peggy’s lesbianism; breasts and mastectomies; mortality and funeral choices. In ‘Intimate Possession’ Peggy explores options for herself and her lover to be buried together, sadly realising that it won’t be possible because Peggy, following Jewish practice, will be buried, whereas her lover, whose background is Catholic, choses to be cremated.
She’s an orphan, with only two surviving relatives – one brother and one elderly aunt. She identifies three of her grandparents as Russian Jews who emigrated to the US from shtetls in the Ukraine. My impression may be wrong – I wasn't keeping a clear track of any of the story lines that appear throughout the essays.
Peggy’s father’s family name was Shinitzky (or Shinitzsky, depending on how it was recorded as family members came through immigration into the US) and he changed it just before his marriage to Peggy’s mother. Her parents and the wider family are drawn vividly as they appear over and again in different stories, and their Jewishness and Jewish life in Chicago are always there as part of the background.
Shinner brings to life a way of living and thinking that I know a little about in the abstract, but nothing at all in reality. She’s fearless in pursuit of memories and in persisting with directions and choices that cause her emotional pain, peeling away anything that might be an easy answer to get to the kernel she knows may be bitter, as in her realisation that she and her lover cannot be interred together.
It’s intellectually and emotionally engaging, warm, thoughtful, funny and memorable.
The subtitle of You Feel so Mortal is Essays on the Body, but it’s not so much the elements of bodies that she writes about (feet, noses, aging) as the pictures she draws of people and relationships that will stay with me.
Much of what she writes is about being Jewish, in Chicago, at different times of her own life and the lives of her parents. In her first story, ‘Family Feet’, the tone starts out light and funny - ‘I have, according to a dubious assemblage of pundits, propagandists and pseudoscientists, Jewish feet. What I thought was familial is, in the eyes of some, tribal. My feet are flat. They turn out.’ – to serious, as she gives examples of racist stereotypes of Jewish bodies from Medieval times to Nazi Germany
She uses similar shifts from light to serious in ‘Elective’, about Jewish noses and her own nose job at age sixteen like the other teenage Jewish girls to ‘correct’ their ‘defective’ Jewish noses; and in the Fitting(s) where her account of the humiliations of having Bras fitted morphs into a discussion of breasts and breast cancer, then back to the fitter and final purchase of five well-fitting bras, now a business transaction, all intimacy and embarrassment set aside. Her mental counting of breasts in the fitting room brought me up short:
Is it possible to talk about bras without talking about breasts? I count them up. I have two. Ann has one, N. has one, S has one (although she plans on two after her treatment is done), my mother, when she died (of something else) had one, my grandmother (also dead of something else) one, B. (diagnosed two months after Ann and now dead) one. To the four of us and our six breasts, N. had said, raising a glass of wine in a toast shortly after Ann’s mastectomy. Two couples, four friends, six breasts.’
Shinner is lesbian and has a lover, not a partner, who is central in several stories - about her family, their difficulty in accepting Peggy’s lesbianism; breasts and mastectomies; mortality and funeral choices. In ‘Intimate Possession’ Peggy explores options for herself and her lover to be buried together, sadly realising that it won’t be possible because Peggy, following Jewish practice, will be buried, whereas her lover, whose background is Catholic, choses to be cremated.
She’s an orphan, with only two surviving relatives – one brother and one elderly aunt. She identifies three of her grandparents as Russian Jews who emigrated to the US from shtetls in the Ukraine. My impression may be wrong – I wasn't keeping a clear track of any of the story lines that appear throughout the essays.
Peggy’s father’s family name was Shinitzky (or Shinitzsky, depending on how it was recorded as family members came through immigration into the US) and he changed it just before his marriage to Peggy’s mother. Her parents and the wider family are drawn vividly as they appear over and again in different stories, and their Jewishness and Jewish life in Chicago are always there as part of the background.
Shinner brings to life a way of living and thinking that I know a little about in the abstract, but nothing at all in reality. She’s fearless in pursuit of memories and in persisting with directions and choices that cause her emotional pain, peeling away anything that might be an easy answer to get to the kernel she knows may be bitter, as in her realisation that she and her lover cannot be interred together.
It’s intellectually and emotionally engaging, warm, thoughtful, funny and memorable.
November 7, 2014
I’m so fucking glad University of Chicago Press finally published a collection of Peggy Shinner’s essays on the body. Except, though, I’m not glad it got published, like, in Chicago, for whatever reason (I don’t pretend I know the politics of this stuff), only because Shinner’s already a local legend and I need people outside this city to realize THIS LADY’S A LEGEND.
I love this book. You’ll love this book if you’ve ever looked at even one part of your body and thought why the fuck are you like that, or had trouble understanding even one idiosyncrasy of the particular brain inside you. God, these essays are so fucking fantastic, I greedily read them all in a day (even though, in reality, they’ve been parceled out, appearing in lit mags as earlier as 2000) and just KNOW I’ll be digesting them for a long long while to come.
As mentioned, every essay in here is unapologetically centered around the body. Of course, we springboard from there. Pieces about posture become about race in America; thoughts on autopsies summon religious beliefs; nose jobs relate into a man’s ability to function at a peak professional level.
Shinner, an outsider from the American ideal in many ways (Jewish, woman, lesbian), struggles with the way her body, this misshapen Jewish body of hers, fits into the larger context of the world in many essays.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to her race: Feet; posture; nose; inability to face cremation; unease with organ donation.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to being a woman: a tinge of kleptomania; decreased ability to defend herself; breasts; hair.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to her brain: desperation to feel unique; discomfort with being mildly depressed; being a lesbian; guilt about feeling oddly about her Jewish qualities; guilt about feeling oddly about her womanish qualities.
These stories, though, are amazing.
“Pocketing” reveals what I’ve always thought to be true, but never asked my friends: Don’t you just get the urge to steal things you could very well buy? Shinner’s stolen a few things from stores, something I’ve never been brave enough to do; any pocketing of mine has been from friends and families homes, which is probably worse. I only steal tiny tiny things, items I can put in a pocket like beads, trinkets or miniature figurines, sample squirt bottles of perfume, a perfect lipstick. Of course, once these items make it back to my house, I’m too guilty to ever touch them, never able to use or look at the objects, and then I go on beating myself up over taking the thing. What Shinner confirms: I am not insane for doing this. In fact, someone reading this is probably nodding her head (because it’s likely a woman) in agreement. Unlike some experts believe, kleptomania is not a sexual fetish; it’s an impulse-control issue. Much like picking a scab, we know it will never end well, but we must do it nonetheless.
“Berenice’s Hair” may be my favorite piece, despite it’s subdued, third-person tones. Tracing the mythologies and the rules surrounding womens’ hair for thousands of years, Shinner offers no advice on how to keep one locks, only a reiteration of what society has always told us. There is no telling who is right who is wrong; it’s plainly laid before us without comment.
“Postmortem,” the conclusion of the book, sees Shinner struggling to come to terms with the science and cultural significance of her father’s autopsy. When first asked if they elect for the procedure, she and her family accept. A funeral is had, and weeks later, Shinner learns doctors are still examining her father’s brain. Because it wasn’t buried inside him. None of his organs were. That’s just how autopsies are. But it’s funny – wouldn’t we know that? Why does that seem like new information? Do we hear that, nod, and promptly forgot because it’s too strange to imagine our skin, dressed in suits and silk dresses, going into the earth empty not just of soul, but of, really, all substance?
Maybe that’s what I love about You Feel So Mortal the most. Shinner raises these questions, probes around her own world, her own body, yet puts no judgment on ours. She does not dismiss you for having a nose job. She does not roll her eyes at your rock hard abs, posture of a princess. She looks at these fleshy, mortal bodies, realizes the fragility of these objects and does nothing to injury the spirit inside. Instead, we are only asked to wonder.
I love this book. You’ll love this book if you’ve ever looked at even one part of your body and thought why the fuck are you like that, or had trouble understanding even one idiosyncrasy of the particular brain inside you. God, these essays are so fucking fantastic, I greedily read them all in a day (even though, in reality, they’ve been parceled out, appearing in lit mags as earlier as 2000) and just KNOW I’ll be digesting them for a long long while to come.
As mentioned, every essay in here is unapologetically centered around the body. Of course, we springboard from there. Pieces about posture become about race in America; thoughts on autopsies summon religious beliefs; nose jobs relate into a man’s ability to function at a peak professional level.
Shinner, an outsider from the American ideal in many ways (Jewish, woman, lesbian), struggles with the way her body, this misshapen Jewish body of hers, fits into the larger context of the world in many essays.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to her race: Feet; posture; nose; inability to face cremation; unease with organ donation.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to being a woman: a tinge of kleptomania; decreased ability to defend herself; breasts; hair.
Here are parts of her she feels oddly about and contributes to her brain: desperation to feel unique; discomfort with being mildly depressed; being a lesbian; guilt about feeling oddly about her Jewish qualities; guilt about feeling oddly about her womanish qualities.
These stories, though, are amazing.
“Pocketing” reveals what I’ve always thought to be true, but never asked my friends: Don’t you just get the urge to steal things you could very well buy? Shinner’s stolen a few things from stores, something I’ve never been brave enough to do; any pocketing of mine has been from friends and families homes, which is probably worse. I only steal tiny tiny things, items I can put in a pocket like beads, trinkets or miniature figurines, sample squirt bottles of perfume, a perfect lipstick. Of course, once these items make it back to my house, I’m too guilty to ever touch them, never able to use or look at the objects, and then I go on beating myself up over taking the thing. What Shinner confirms: I am not insane for doing this. In fact, someone reading this is probably nodding her head (because it’s likely a woman) in agreement. Unlike some experts believe, kleptomania is not a sexual fetish; it’s an impulse-control issue. Much like picking a scab, we know it will never end well, but we must do it nonetheless.
“Berenice’s Hair” may be my favorite piece, despite it’s subdued, third-person tones. Tracing the mythologies and the rules surrounding womens’ hair for thousands of years, Shinner offers no advice on how to keep one locks, only a reiteration of what society has always told us. There is no telling who is right who is wrong; it’s plainly laid before us without comment.
“Postmortem,” the conclusion of the book, sees Shinner struggling to come to terms with the science and cultural significance of her father’s autopsy. When first asked if they elect for the procedure, she and her family accept. A funeral is had, and weeks later, Shinner learns doctors are still examining her father’s brain. Because it wasn’t buried inside him. None of his organs were. That’s just how autopsies are. But it’s funny – wouldn’t we know that? Why does that seem like new information? Do we hear that, nod, and promptly forgot because it’s too strange to imagine our skin, dressed in suits and silk dresses, going into the earth empty not just of soul, but of, really, all substance?
Maybe that’s what I love about You Feel So Mortal the most. Shinner raises these questions, probes around her own world, her own body, yet puts no judgment on ours. She does not dismiss you for having a nose job. She does not roll her eyes at your rock hard abs, posture of a princess. She looks at these fleshy, mortal bodies, realizes the fragility of these objects and does nothing to injury the spirit inside. Instead, we are only asked to wonder.
April 30, 2014
I found this essay collection to be one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time. The thread that runs through all the essays is the body, and there is hardly a body part that the author doesn’t explore. Feet, noses, hair, brains, spines – they’re all fair game. She considers many of them through the lens of her Jewishness, and her ambivalent feelings toward this, and the results are invariably poignant and comical. Also fascinating, as in making her points, the author draws on an extraordinary knowledge of history, religion and philosophy. I learned and laughed as I read these essays, which I found hard to put down. I also nearly cried, as well, when the author discusses her teenage decision to have a nose job, having bought into the larger society’s view that Jewish noses (if there really are such things) are ugly, while snub gentile noses attractive. Without a weak essay in the entire collection, this is a book to be treasured.
March 12, 2014
Just last night I finished Peggy Shinner's captivating new book of essays. It started with feet and ended with autopsies. And in between, well, bras, posture, and lots of other things. I loved her style--yes, the first essay is about her feet, but also about a world of feet. What feet are, mean, have been, will be. I learned more and more about Peggy as I got further and further into the book, and this was charming and wonderful. But I also learned more and more about the world. And with her experiences as the reference point in each essay--the bulls eye that her writing extends outward from-- I got Peggy, yes, but I also got a new world that I will continue to think about days, weeks, months to come.
February 13, 2015
I really loved this collection of essays. Shimmer is an incredible prose stylist and I loved the subjects she engaged in the essays. I had not heard of her work before so this was a real find for me.
March 7, 2018
Really enjoyed the Jewishness of this collection of essays on the body.
RIYL: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
RIYL: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
June 30, 2018
autopsal deliberance recounted
December 25, 2022
3.75
a very interesting read! a lot of insight into the Jewish experience that I haven't read anything similar too before
• read as an e-book on scribd
a very interesting read! a lot of insight into the Jewish experience that I haven't read anything similar too before
• read as an e-book on scribd
September 26, 2025
關於不同部位的散文集，還好吧。
April 23, 2014
The book is called an essay collection, but I would also classify it as a memoir because the author lays bare so much of herself as she examines the body through her writing. It is full of interesting facts, observations, and hard-hitting insights. From slouching to finding out your mother wrote to a murderer in prison and much more, Shinner turns these topics into a fascinating read that every mere mortal can relate to!
August 31, 2014
Fellow author, teacher, and martial artist Peggy Shinner's collection of essays has a picture of two bras on its cover. You can forgive me for thinking, at first glance, that it was a "chick" book. It is not. It is a book for anyone who has ever considered the fragile threads that tie us to our friends, our parents, our lovers. If you want to learn the connection between a famous killer, a nose job, and a Jewish cemetery, read this book.
December 17, 2013
This is such a witty, meticulously researched, and moving collection of essays in which Shinner writes with self-effacing humor and true humanity about her body, her secular Jewish upbringing, about what it means to be a reflective, intelligent woman in early 21st century Western society, to live in a city like Chicago, to have the family, the friends, and the life partner that she does.
February 9, 2015
Peggy Shinner's essays in You Feel So Mortal that retain focus on the body--specifically, the aging female body--are endearing, worldly, and well-written. The later essays diverge slightly, but are still enjoyable to read.
July 31, 2015
DNF 68% it was sorta interesting, just Not what I was thinking it was about. It seemed like every chapter was just about how Jewish and how gay she is. While there is nothing at all wrong with those things, I just don't care to read a whole chapter on how "Jewish" your nose is.
Read
August 29, 2014814.6 S5568y 2014
April 6, 2016
Five stars and then some.
December 22, 2014
Peggy is wonderful, so it's no surprise that this collection is, too.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews