Damaged Like Me: Essays on Love, Harm, and Transformation

by Kimberly Dark

People who have been damaged, thrown away, marginalized, or traumatized are more capable of apprehending social patterns, precisely because they’ve needed to be aware and vigilant about how the world works. For too long, those who rely on long-held rights and entitlement have claimed that others are biased about the very topics on which they have expertise. Damaged Like Me is a series of essays and stories that reveal a complex social landscape. It shows how possible and vital it is to build roads to a more equitable and loving collective culture that includes body sovereignty, racial justice, gender equity/liberation, and much more. It does so by relying on the insights and approaches to knowledge production of those on the receiving end of inequity and violence, those whose “objectivity” on issues of oppression has been consistently maligned despite their having the most to teach us.

“Kimberly Dark profoundly understands the power of storytelling to create change. Damaged Like Me begins with her body and reaches out toward new meaning-making in a burst of resilience and imagination. Each dazzling essay asks what we might learn from the tensions, contradictions, erasures and difficulties we have inhabited at the edges of culture, and how we may yet reinvent ourselves and new communities. These brilliant insights will illuminate new paths even through the troubled dark.” — Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water

“Kimberly Dark has forever transformed the way I understand sex, gender, and the notion of 'damage.' The patriarchy should be terrified of this book. The rest of us can stick it in our hearts—emboldenment for the revolution.” —Ariel Gore, author of Hexing the Patriarchy

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Essays, Queer, Sexuality

230 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2021

About the author

Kimberly Dark is a writer, professor and raconteur working to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life so that we all discover our influences and reclaim our power as social creators. She's performed stories and poetry at hundreds of venues worldwide and her essays appear in a wide range of scholarly and popular publications. She's the author of "Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old" (AK Press, 2019), "The Daddies" (Brill Publishing, 2019), Love and Errors (Puna Press, 2018) and co-editor of Ways of Being in Teaching (Sense, 2017). She teaches in Sociology at Cal State, San Marcos and in the Cal State Summer Arts Program.

Find book club resources at kimberlydark.com.

Reviews

[Lori Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly well written book that transports the reader to places that are uncomfortable and hard yet so important to visit. The messages in these essays are so powerful that I can see myself returning to this book again and again. Kimberly writes in a way that allows for a vivid image to form in your mind all while feeling like you are having a conversation with her.

[Signe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes providence guides me to a book I need to read. The essays in "Damaged Like Me" address so many issues that are relevant to today's racial & body-political landscape as well as issues I'm struggling with personally.

In Dark's words: "Each of the essays in this collection tells a specific stand-alone story about my life, my cultural context, and how the two intersect. Many of them reveal, through detail and specificity, the architecture of everyday life--in both public and very private settings. They reveal the fact that we are al powerful social creators. .. We either re-crecate or re-inscribe culture day by day through our words, interactions and what we allow, and what we negate."

After reading Dark's essays I have a deeper understanding of how my privileges and also the ways in which I'm marginalized place me in positions where I cause/caused harm and also where I can create positive change in myself and the world around me through my deeds and creative works.

Highly recommend!

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Progress is hard because we snap back to what comforts us—or at least what's familiar—like tight little rubber bands. However, maybe it's possible for greater elasticity to emerge at the intersections of suprema cist issues, and for daily, individual practices with language and interaction to encourage lasting change."

I will begin saying that I figured out early on that my feelings towards this collection will be lukewarm and it is a totally me problem. The writing, the subjects, the style—all point towards the kind of personal essay that isn't my cup of tea. Memoiristic, almost self-help adjacent, self-affirmative and self-reflexive, with a "I-We" language that's suited to a talk—I just couldn't appreciate it. I prefer essays that are layered, literary, referential, intertextual play with form & structure. This is not to say that I hated the book or even disliked it.

I think Dark has done a great job in outlining a plethora of social justice issues, uncovering how privilege & prejudice work, the ways in which certain bodies are policed, and the inherent violence of existing social systems. She uses her own life experiences to bolster her arguments in reflective essays that offer transformative and pedagogical insights. As a large queer woman, she especially focuses on those marginalizations. This book is compelling, compassionate, instructive, eye-opening. It celebrates solidarity and nuance.



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to start and stop reading this book (what felt like hundreds of times) many times to finish it. There was so much within it that was important, heavy, heartbreaking, and difficult to read (both the style of writing and the content itself).

Mackenzie Edwards shares the following in a review published in Fat Studies, Volume 11, 2022 - Issue 2 and available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/1... which was as close as I could get to a review for this author I appreciate so much:

"Damage manifests in a multitude of ways, both personally and societally. Although the concept of damage may seem abstract, the trauma and harm it involves are very real. The reverberations of damage ripple through fat lived experience as well. Many fat people's lives are in a variety of ways fraught with damage from a body shaming, body oppressing culture. Fatness is too rarely fully fleshed out as a locus for trauma, but that angle is thoroughly explored in Kimberly Dark's essay(2021) collection Damaged Like Me.

Storyteller Kimberly Dark presents fatness alongside womanhood, queerness, and more as arenas where damage operates as micro-level reflections of macro-level injustices. The candid first person narrative centers these stories as worthwhile and important. As Dark writes, "My experiences as an incest survivor, as a fat queer woman, and as an active cultural creator - not just a cultural critic - have given me a kind of training and expertise that is valuable" (4). Through this examination of harm comes moments of true transformation, showing the power of change both individually and more broadly."

[Jendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nuanced essay collection about how to imagine intersectional social justice while being kinder to each other's mistakes. Dark writes beautifully about the damage we sustain and repeat as marginalized people in intimate relationships.

As often happens with essay collections, the lack of a through-line made this a slower read. There could have been a stronger thematic tie between the pieces. My favorite essays were the ones where she interwove personal experience with political analysis, as in the essay about facing fat stigma as a yoga teacher. Some pieces were more abstract and not as compelling to me. I appreciate that she is a lesbian-feminist who affirms transgender people.

I bought the print edition from feminist bookstore Charis Books after hearing Dark's extremely moving and entertaining book launch reading that they hosted. Thumbs-up for indie bookstores, thumbs-down for the painfully small print from AK Press. Publishers, please consider accessibility in book design.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kimberly Dark speaks with clarity and vision and I find her wisdom very enlightening. Her memories and experiences are her own but her thoughts and impressions apply to many, including women like myself,who on the surface seem quite different from her.
She speaks to the areas of vulnerability and difference that mark us as 'the other' even within our own self identified group. Shame, sexuality, physically not fitting into a to small world - no topic is off base. She puts a public speakers face to misogynist notions that plague us all and dismantles the faulty logic that allows them to persist. Her wisdom embraces many aspects of life that I had not considered as overdue for change. Empathy and wisdom in one small book. Highly recommended. A gift to us all.

[Lizzie Wann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took my time with this book, mostly because these essays are not exactly breezy. But they are exacting, profound, and deeply needed. Kimberly Dark writes about many different topics that are highly relevant, from bodily autonomy, anti-racism, being queer, incest, fatness, and much more. Each essay, while not necessarily light, is readable, accessible, and interesting. She has a keen intellect and a deft pen and employs both with ease. I have dog-eared and underlined several pages and plan to refer back to the book as a resource as I work and dance through life.

[Hannah Bergstrom de Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy essays and this was no exception. The reflections and musing that Dark delves into intrigue and challenge. It took me a while to finish as often happens for me in essay compilations by a single author, the voice becomes so familiar I struggle to pick it up and yet, like almost every books of essays I have read this one is worth it. Dark's voice is particular, compassionate and even as she cuts to the bone of difficult subjects.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Throughly a repetitive (i.e., molestation, body speak, and cultural/social issues), narcissistic approach that presents how the world has wronged her endlessly, Ms. Dark paints herself as optimistic success while overcoming adversity but fails to tell one in-depth story to make her relatable. Instead, her essays magnify her insecurities and present top level information that tends to be basic, common knowledge.

[Cheryl Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kimberly Dark's essays on feminism, survivorship, queerness, bodies, and motherhood are equally thoughtful and playful. She takes a sort of "yes and" approach to thinking about language, family structure, and gender. I love a writer who can make me think more and differently while still encouraging me to be gentle with myself.

[Valerie Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up in a small bookstore that focuses on independent press. I enjoyed many of the essays and appreciated her writing but had trouble identifying with a lot of it; as one of my favorite book reviewers (Roxane Gay) would say, I am not the target audience.

[Nicole C. Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This read was not originally what I expected it to be. Despite that, the authors writing style and vulnerability worked well for me. She is a gifted writer and I appreciate what she has to say.

[Laural B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Damaged Like Me” opened my eyes to variations of trauma and how one can use such experiences to help bring about a better tomorrow. Stirring and inspiring.