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About The Embodied Reader
Only a few bodies go through life unscathed. Illness, injury, and aging transform us, but our losses also contribute to our embodied knowledge.
Embodiment is recognizing a feeling or a sensation in our bodies before the mind names what is happening. Embodied knowledge tells us whether we are safe or at risk, calm or nervous, filled with joy or despair. Honoring the particular knowledge and history we carry within us allows us to define ourselves, for ourselves.
The writing collected on The Embodied Reader describes the paradox of experiencing the world through our bodies, while also longing to transcend them.
It's a category of literature that has always existed but hasn't been named. I hope readers share the sense of recognition I felt in Akhil Sharma's rendering of a family reshaped by a child's catastrophic injury, in Tove Ditlevsen's unflinching account of a mind and body in revolt, or in Julian Barnes's precise attention to a body's slow betrayals. Authors such as Maggie Nelson, Oliver Sacks, Kiese Laymon, and Chloé Cooper Jones write about what it means to be human, which is, inescapably, to be in our bodies.
This literature centers on specific portraits of fictional characters and autobiographical subjects perplexed by their own bodies. An observant reader may become consciously aware of something they’ve already apprehended in their body. These stories prompt emotional and physical empathy, connecting the reader to others who’ve felt the same.
The notable writers featured on The Embodied Reader depict bodies not as metaphors but as real and sometimes inconvenient. I hope, with this project, we stop fighting our bodies and their limitations long enough to listen, to absorb their message and meaning.
About The Editor
In addition to her writing life, Caren Rabbino founded and is the Principal of Fast Forward Consulting, a firm that supports organizational development for clients in the arts, architecture and design, education, and non-profit sectors.
In 1989, Caren co-founded Miami Light Project and served as Executive Director of this non-profit cultural organization, producing an annual music, dance, and theater series. Now in its 38th season, MLP continues to provide workshops for artists, educational programs for students of every age, and commissioning opportunities for performers.
About Asymmetries: a Memoir of Difference
I’ve mined 50 years of journals to write a memoir, entitled Asymmetries: A Memoir of Difference, published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Losing my leg suddenly, at 14, plucked me from the realm of the able-bodied and impacted my family. It intersected with my studies and, later, drew me to a career working with artists. I tried to find my place by traveling to remote parts of the world. I struggled to reinhabit my body and feel confident. However, haunting phantom sensations reminded me that my body had become a foreign object.
I had to contend with my own embodied reality, a reckoning that able-bodied people might easily avoid. Through love, friendship, and yoga practice, I discovered a mind-body connection that pushed past limiting ideas about what I could do and feel.
Asymmetries shines a light on the experience of being different and the friction inherent in inhabiting our unique bodies. I hope Asymmetries will expand the scope of narratives and help others with a disability shrug off miniaturizing clichés and value their own embodied knowledge.
Caren Rabbino
author of Asymmetries
Caren Rabbino’s ASYMMETRIES does everything a memoir should do:
it disrupts and delights. Rabbino artfully explores the unique conundrum of life in a non-normative body, using her experiences to challenge limited ideas about how this looks and feels. She also articulates the struggle we all face as embodied humans, disabled and temporarily able-bodied, to truly belong — to ourselves and to the world.
Emily Rapp Black
author of Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg