Unbecoming

by Angeli Lacson

In a series of brief notes, Unbecoming explores questions of loss, illness, pain, and disability. It attends, with care, to the minutiae of everyday life shaped by illness and injury to center the ordinariness of non-healthiness under capital and empire, as well as the ways in which this unwellness invites new forms of political belonging and solidarity. Moving across the hospital, doctor’s offices, government bureaucracy, university classrooms, and the interiors of the home, the text engages with literature, news reports, cultural theory, and remembered conversations to gather shapes of collective survival that emerge from the continuity of crisis

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Illness

127 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2023

Reviews

[june · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

"to recognize that even in the path now closed to me I would not have survived without care of others. Dependency meant I had to relearn intimacy: to trust in others despite pain and humiliation, to confront the deep-rooted shame of the need to physically rely on other people to a greater extent than I could have ever imagined."

intimate, critical, and profound. I thought that as I read "notes on a paralysis" before that I knew what to expect but the book subverted it in the best possible way, that shift in ":to record" and "melody, song" moved me.

what a raw and arresting perspective on disability through the lens of a critic/artist...in awe of the writing, and poignant voice just wow.

[Pia · Rating 5 out of 5]

privileged to know the woman who wrote this beautiful book.
a collection of notes revolving around disability, angeli writes with the intellect & perspective of someone beyond her years... her graciousness, her strength leave me in awe to read about.

[Ivan Labayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://chopsueyngarod.wordpress.com/...

"Angeli Lacson’s first note in Unbecoming: “I take, as my point of departure, the stunning observation by the members of the West German Socialist Patients’ Collective that illness ‘is the only possible form of life in capitalism,’ whereby cure is not the elimination of illness but ‘the maintenance of the ability to go to work.” Opkors, I have heard something similar to this before, tungkol naman sa work, sa waged work: waged work is not really about self-fulfillment and life-affirmation and all that Maslowan burger without coleslaw; waged work is mostly about exploitation, where the wages are just enough for us not to die and starve and not be able to work."

[Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the privilege of reading: to be displaced from the comfort of what you know. So much restrained power in these ‘notes’ from Lacson. Our country’s struggle with understanding the nuances of disability and mental health, with facilitating care work and proper treatment. Ends on a hopeful note:

"When you spend every day asking others for help, you learn to cherish care as an idiom of belonging–one that is political as much as it is intimate … We belong to the world, and to each other."

[dumadaloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

growing up i kept my books in pristine condition, wrapped the sleeves with plastic, kept the spines uncreased, the paper as spotless as i could. this was the first book i decided i’ll annotate (a lot of it are just highlights, to be quite honest, of tangled thoughts i’ve had but now written much more clearly by angeli), but around the last third of the book, i read and read and read and couldn’t bring myself to glide the lead of my pencil against the pages. it felt wrong. but those are the notes i’ll remember the most.

[Jecko]

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

[Rockcat Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible. might write a more legible review but this was my favorite read of the year