Hysterical

Starred review from July 1, 2022

It is no secret that the medical field ignores, underfunds, and looks away from issues that affect women. It also tends to layer new words on old allegations that women's symptoms are manifestations of hysteria instead of attempting to understand them. Bassist, who writes the "Funny Women" column on The Rumpus, has bravely used the story of her body as it has been overwritten by insufficient, inefficient medical discourses to offer answers for women who feel as if they inhabit "a body that didn't make sense to science, a psyche that didn't make sense to mankind in general." Like Tillie Olson, Susan Bordo, and so many feminist theorists before her, Bassist explores the silencing acts that keep women small. She also explores the ways in which finding a voice requires women to take up space in ways that transgress expectations by insisting on the female body's inherent rightness--something society still does not believe. VERDICT Disruptive, tender, and beautiful, this book is a reversal of women's apologies and a demand for more--Emily Bowles

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2022
A sharp examination of life in "a culture where men speak and women shut up."In her impassioned debut memoir, essayist and humor writer Bassist rails against the systemic misogyny and patriarchy that silence women's voices and, for her, became embodied as pain. For more than a year, she searched for medical help for a persistent headache and backache, blurred vision, and stomach problems only to be told repeatedly that nothing was wrong with her. "I had what millions of American women had," she writes, "pain that didn't make sense to doctors, a body that didn't make sense to science, a psyche that didn't make sense to mankind in general." Like many women throughout history, she was deemed hysterical, and she was prescribed sedatives and mood stabilizers, some of which made her symptoms worse. When an acupuncturist suggested that her pain was caused by "caged fury," Bassist felt a sudden sense of clarity. She examines many sources of her anger, including her overbearing father, emotionally and physically violent boyfriends, and a culture that defines outspoken women as "crazy psycho bitches." In TV and movies, women are victims of extreme violence; in the media, and in her writing classes, men's voices and opinions dominate. "Men's writing was 'writing,' " she learned when working in publishing, "and women's writing was 'women's writing,' " or "chick lit." Instead of learning to stand up for herself, she admits, she got better "at acclimating. At expecting abuse." "To cope with being silenced in my twenties," she writes, "I choose silence in my thirties." Obsessively fearful of saying the wrong thing or of being retaliated against, she refused to share her experiences on social media, and she plummeted into self-doubt. "I hated myself and other women as much as the world hated us," she writes, "because when hatred is environmental, anyone can catch it, then perpetuate it, until women are misogynistic masochists with toxic masculinity." Her memoir stands as proof of an arduous process of healing.A fiery cultural critique.

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August 1, 2022
Three months after the election that rocked America, Bassist got sick. Multiple symptoms plagued her, from headaches to a breast lump to a chronic sore throat. Like many women, Bassist was dismissed with a prescription for antidepressants and expected to get better on her own. But when she delved into her own past, including the history of her own rape, she realized her pain was broader than she thought. She'd explored this topic in critically acclaimed essays such as the one that appeared in Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018). Here, Bassist expands on the harm that results when women are pressed into silence by sexual assault, a medical establishment that only acknowledges one gender, and even language itself. Impeccably researched, this blistering account complements Chanel Miller's Know My Name (2019) and Sarah Ramey's The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness (2020). Bassist's resounding voice will echo in readers' heads long after they have finished the book. This is a reckoning with an unjust power system that hurts everyone.

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