Body Breakdowns

by Janis Harper (Editor)

Body Breakdowns is a collection of true tales about brushes with mortality and the medical establishment. Some are serious, some are funny; all are about illnesses, both minor and major. The pieces are all related to aging and are told in strong, engaging, and authentic voices. They are about people suddenly discovering they’re vulnerable and the different ways they come to terms with that, as well as how they deal with the health professionals whose job it is to provide care for our bodies. They are also about how people who have physically suffered learn to find words for and, thus, shape the new world they find themselves in. These stories remind us that everything can change in a moment. And that we’re all in these aging bodies together.

168 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 2007

About the author

Janis Harper is a writer, editor, singer-songwriter, actor, and former adjunct English professor turned expressive arts therapist. Her lifelong passions for the arts, metaphysics, spirituality, and philosophy come together in her 2021 philosophical-spiritual novel, "Jonas and the Mountain: A Metaphysical Love Story" (Sacred Stories). Although fictional, she considers it to be the truest work she’s ever written. Janis's writing can be found in literary journals and anthologies, including in two creative nonfiction anthologies that she conceived and edited: "Body Breakdowns: Tales of Illness and Recovery" and "Emails From India: Women Write Home." She has presented her work in Canada, the US, and India, and lives in British Columbia. https://janisharper.ca

Reviews

[TheTyee.ca]

I was grocery shopping in a Superstore when I took, as a friend put it, a nosedive into the frozen peas.

It's OK for her to talk to me like that -- we're members of the same club. She paid for her membership with a bilateral mastectomy; I bought mine with a cardiac arrest. After her operation, we tried to think of ways she could tell any new boyfriends that she was, shall we say, a couple of prows short of a Queen Mary. I suggested tasteful euphemisms like "hooterectomy" and "disemboobment," but she didn't care for them.

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[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. Written as short stories by various authors it takes you on their experiences and learnings from having their bodies 'breakdown' and recover, or for some maintaining at the breakdown stage. It is sometimes, heartbreaking, frustrating and humorous and well worth the read.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard for me to parse out my general irritation with this book from my general irritation of the Baby Boomers as a people. It's like they're the first generation ever to suffer through aging and impending mortality. I want to shake them. Get over yourself! Your parents were the Great Generation for chrissakes! You can bet they never figured they'd live forever!

I was also mighty annoyed at (most) of the essayists' conflation of aging with bodily decay, which to me ignores the fact that illness and disease can strike at any age and that many young/er people bear fatal and non-fatal illness with humour and grace. There are a few essays by younger (thirtysomething, my age) writers facing chronic conditions which even the score a bit. Perhaps the book needed a different title, or a subtitle related to aging, which might have framed it more accurately. Jane Silcott's "Ghosts", on chronic pain, is good, reflective of the concept of the illness narrative. Dennis E. Bolen's "Anger" is angry in that privileged-straight-white-male-never-encountered-difficulty-before way, and sexist (he describes a female acquaintance as "worldly, tired, formerly ravishing." And you were formerly ravisher, I suppose?), as is J. Cates "How to Survive the System: Tips for Boomers." Cates refers to clinic staff as "invariably short, blonde, slightly overweight girls of twentysomething" and then later says "Don't believe anything these bimbettes tell you. They are not on your side." (Emphasis his.) How did that get past editing, I'd like to know?

Crystal Hurdle's "Tied with Black Grosgrain Ribbon: Letters to the Insurance Adjuster" is wryly funny and editor Janis Harper's "Finding an Ending" has poignancy and heart. Would that more of the book be made up of voices like Silcott, Hurdle and Harper.