Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect. At age nine, first misdiagnosed and finally identified as having. Yet the author is so resilient, so intelligent, so insightful, and such a good writer that her story transcends mere illness narrative. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Lucy Grealy, poet, tells the story of her childhood and young adulthood, a twenty year period of overwhelming physical and mental suffering. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."Īt age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. "I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else.
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