The Sum of Her Parts: Essays

Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction

by Sian Griffiths

The Sum of Her Parts explores how women’s body parts and the roles/parts that women play have been deployed toward political ends. One essay examines Sarah Winchester and the lore that sprung up around her most famous―and most falsely mythologized―home, the Winchester Mystery House, to suggest that the woman and her house have been used as vessels to hold the nation’s ongoing gun guilt. Another essay springboards from a personal encounter into etymological history, tracing how the word “cunt” went from being a relatively benign description of a body part to the word the Oxford English Dictionary cites as the most vile invective in the English language. Connecting topics as diverse as bra shopping, Wonder Woman, and a Metallica rockumentary, Griffiths explores what women’s parts mean in contemporary America.

Griffiths uses humor and sincerity to approach the topic of the female body through a wide variety of essay forms, blending lyric and narrative modes. Using fragmentation as well as traditional argumentation, the collection invites the reader to think ambiguously and explosively, allowing complication rather than easily connected dots. The result is a discussion of the female body that is varied, complex, nuanced, and thoughtful.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2022

About the author

Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah, where she teaches creative writing at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Cincinnati Review, and American Short Fiction (online), among other publications. She is the author of the novels Borrowed Horses and Scrapple and the short fiction chapbook The Heart Keeps Faulty Time. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial teams at Barrelhouse and American Short Fiction. For more information, please visit sbgriffiths.com

Reviews

[Chris]

From the very first essay, the first part in the equation that is The Sum of Her Parts, Siân Griffiths exposes the microaggressions that create the predicament of women in the US, Western, modern culture, showing that these microaggressions are, cumulatively, not an unhappy nuisance, but a cornerstone to our culture and women’s unequal place in it. She writes eloquently, with candor, with humor, and with a earthiness on subject as wide as horseback riding, rock and pop music, film (Why, in the entire universe of Star Wars, is there only one woman with agency?), bras, and the infamous Winchester House.
Each essay is revealing. Revealing the reality behind the hype, and revealing how the hype dismisses a majority of humanity in its invention. Revealing a first century Celtic woman who took on the Roman Empire. Revealing that baking shows quality not only in the item that comes out of the oven.
These essays offer insight and perspective on recent history and our cultural legacy.

[L O G A N · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful, highly recommend

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved each and every essay. Such a compelling collection.

[Mauri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the privilege of obtaining an advanced reader’s copy of The Sum of Her Parts, and, if I am being quite honest, this book felt life changing on an existential level for me. I completely devoured Griffiths’ poignant and truth-punching prose. By the first page, where she cleverly introduces the parts-as-whole theme through a series of algebraic equations, I knew that there was something uniquely engaging about this collection of essays. Throughout her various essays, she examines various parts that women are reduced to--her sexuality, her gender expression and gender roles, her role as mother, her beauty--with each of these “parts” centering around and reflecting on society’s idea of a woman’s body as the most important, defining aspect of her. Griffiths explores the ways in which women are treated as the sum of their parts, rather than a whole self--especially pertaining to the dissonance between women’s bodies and their minds. As a woman (and especially as a woman for whom many of the most difficult struggles in my life have come from my body and the inability to see myself as more than this body and its implications), many of these essays stirred deep emotions within my own body--emotions that have been bubbling deep beneath the surface, but needed words for permission to emerge. From bra shopping to Princess Leia, from riding horses to watching football, from making bread to the Netflix documentary on Mötley Crüe, Griffiths interrogates, exposes, and reclaims the complexity of what it means to be a woman. The following quote from Griffiths’ essay, “A Well-Turned Ankle,” beautifully captures the undertone of her entire collection: “I think of how much is  hidden in the interior landscapes of our bodies and how much can be read on those maps. I think about how one small, isolated story of a part can be the sum of so many wholes” (115). 

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Siân Griffiths book was a delectable experience in pain and laughter for me. Her essays succinctly capture what it means to grow up with and continue to inhabit a woman’s body, and each essay rings true to that experience. Yet her essays aren’t overtly steeped in feminism, or even in womanhood, but read and feel more like a human being, writing real, universal experiences, that are as intriguingly written as they are engaging to read. Equal parts growth, humor, and truth, her writing hits spot-on at keeping me reading. My only complaint is that the book is too delightful to be so short. I finished the book too soon, wanting more of her knock-my-socks-off writing to be entirely satisfied. I got to buy more of her work. “Writing hurts when I write true,” says Griffiths, and many things she writes hurts just as wonderfully to read. Griffiths throws her heart into her writing, and then asks readers: “How exactly do you throw your heart?” I don’t know how she does just that with her writing—but it reads like a woman throwing her soul in ways that stick in your head for days afterwards—and won’t let go. “Art asks the artist,” writes Griffiths, “to honestly represent an aspect of the world. Why we should is less clear.” Good grief, that idea of Griffiths’ made me scramble for a post-it note to stick on the corner of my monitor—I’m still grappling with that stunner—and can’t wait to read more of her work!

[Ammon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased “The Sum of Her Parts” for a nonfiction workshop class I took. In the class were studied form, genre, voice, and subject material. This book has been a perfect and powerful example of all those things.
Griffiths’ essays are powerful and moving. They are also balanced and fair. The book is a collection of essays that seek to explore the idea of self and the idea of womanhood. Each piece is unique and illuminates different aspects of the way society sees women, the way women see themselves, and roles women hold.
This book is a powerful way of revealing womanhood in non-traditional ways. So much of feminism today is filled with anger and fight but Griffeths is none of that. Her points are clear and fair, with perspectives that are academic as well as personal.
She explores microaggressions, yes, but in the context of understanding what they say about womanhood.
I enjoyed reading this book because it was genuine. Sian Griffiths isn’t trying to tear anybody apart, but rather, understand the world, and she does so beautifully. This is not a collection to fix the world but to show the world and the ways women are treated in it. This is not political but analytical. These perspectives are fresh and meaningful and I think everyone ought to read it for the sake of seeing a new lens.
And these are personal essays. They are about Griffiths’s life and she does not force her perspectives but rather explores the things that have made her who she is.

[Karenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and thought-provoking collection that explores what it means to be embodied and female. Using a variety of launching topics, from scones and bras to rock music and super heroes, Griffiths widens the scope of her personal concerns and curiosities to suggest avenues for cultural growth. Warm and empathetic, it’s a treasure to return to again and again.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

So bloody precious and pretentious. Griffiths actually quotes, in all seriousness and in a paragraph all by itself, the serenity prayer, without any commentary or context, as if its inclusion could make her sentences more profound by proximity.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essay collection that explores the female body, the parts of the female body, and how those parts interact and exist in today's society. An excellent collection!