Author: Fernanda Eberstadt
The author’s childhood is like a Truman Capote column about New York, and a wonderful starting point for the many people she then explores as her personal saints for resisting and creating art through their bodies.
I was confronted though, as most of the stories (including body mutilation, prison sentences, and sexual abuse) involved the presence of a child in some aspect, and there is a complete void of compassion about the harm being inflicted on them. I have since found the name for the deeply sick and unsettled feeling I experienced through this book: “deep somatic protest”. My body was protesting hard over stories about the author’s personal saints that were supposedly rallying against institutional power, but was so dismissive of how these ‘heroes’ harmed the most powerless people of all: children. It felt like the author trying to implore me to join in her admiration of what she sees as acts of love by her personal saints, and the whole time my body was screaming back “they are not acting from love!” What an incredible emotional experience from reading a book – even if I am at odds with her views at times, the author is an incredible writer.
If you’re curious about the art world, art history, acts of resistance within institutions, and the fascinating twisting of a young girl’s path from a highly privileged, deeply chaotic childhood in 70s/80s New York, you might like this too…
(Everything in this library is sorted into a category by what it asks of you, not by genre or quality. Click on a category to find more of what you might like.)