Description
Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan's critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.
Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread--for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first.
The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family's ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.
Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.
About the Author
Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. A graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine, she is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan teaches at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts and is a longtime member of GrubStreet. She is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is her first book.
Reviews
"Awarded the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Talusan bravely alchemizes unbearable traumas into a potent memoir remarkably devoid of self-pity, replete with fortitude and grace."
--Terry Hong, Booklist
"The Body Papers is an extraordinary portrait of the artist as survivor. From a legacy of trauma and secrecy spanning oceans and generations, Grace Talusan has crafted a wise, lucid, and big-hearted stand against silence--a literary lifeline for all who have endured profound pain and hope to be seen and loved through it."
--Mia Alvar, author of In the Country--Mia Alvar
"In this moving, clear-eyed memoir, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, she probes the events of her life, documenting them with photographs and official papers. She involves the reader in her quest to make sense of who she has become by charting where she's been.... The portrait Talusan creates of her father, Totoy, is one of the most complex and beautiful parts of the book.... Talusan is still working on healing. It's clear that telling her story with such openness and perceptiveness, is part of that ongoing process."
--Jenny Shank, Barnes & Noble Blog
"In The Body Papers, Grace Talusan takes us to the space between what official documents say and what the body's cells know--the understated prose startles with its beauty, the insights it provides are priceless."
--Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter--Marie Myung-Ok Lee
"This gorgeous, slim memoir is about so many things--being in a body that survives immigration, violence, cancer... this memoir will peel you back sentence after sentence, leaving your nerve endings grateful for the body that wrote it."
--Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk and The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing
Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan's critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.
Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread--for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first.
The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family's ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.
Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.
About the Author
Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. A graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine, she is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan teaches at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts and is a longtime member of GrubStreet. She is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is her first book.
Reviews
"Awarded the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Talusan bravely alchemizes unbearable traumas into a potent memoir remarkably devoid of self-pity, replete with fortitude and grace."
--Terry Hong, Booklist
"The Body Papers is an extraordinary portrait of the artist as survivor. From a legacy of trauma and secrecy spanning oceans and generations, Grace Talusan has crafted a wise, lucid, and big-hearted stand against silence--a literary lifeline for all who have endured profound pain and hope to be seen and loved through it."
--Mia Alvar, author of In the Country--Mia Alvar
"In this moving, clear-eyed memoir, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, she probes the events of her life, documenting them with photographs and official papers. She involves the reader in her quest to make sense of who she has become by charting where she's been.... The portrait Talusan creates of her father, Totoy, is one of the most complex and beautiful parts of the book.... Talusan is still working on healing. It's clear that telling her story with such openness and perceptiveness, is part of that ongoing process."
--Jenny Shank, Barnes & Noble Blog
"In The Body Papers, Grace Talusan takes us to the space between what official documents say and what the body's cells know--the understated prose startles with its beauty, the insights it provides are priceless."
--Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter--Marie Myung-Ok Lee
"This gorgeous, slim memoir is about so many things--being in a body that survives immigration, violence, cancer... this memoir will peel you back sentence after sentence, leaving your nerve endings grateful for the body that wrote it."
--Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk and The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing