Poet Molly McCully Brown's second book, Places I've Taken My Body, covers topics of body, mind and soul in evocative prose as she explores her experience as a woman with cerebral palsy.
Brown (The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded) is tired of talking about disability. And yet even while living abroad on a fellowship--"A year of funded time, when my only obligation is to travel, push toward a second book and get a wider window on the world"--she is driven increasingly inward by a reality that continues to become less accessible. "Every inch I can no longer walk, the world shrinks just a little.... There are places I will never go. There are places I will never go again."
Brown is an astute cartographer of her own identity, even as her body's "slow erosion" demands attention. The book's 17 essays cover a lot of ground: her conversion to Catholicism; the connection she feels to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; an incessant need to move to new places; visualizations of her twin sister, who died in infancy; and feeling "left out of every conversation about feminism," each nevertheless calling back to her relationship with cerebral palsy. "However ethereal my thoughts become... the truth of my body is literal and absolute, like an anchor pulling me back to the world." Brimming with both grief for what is lost and determination for the present and future, Brown's beautiful language and haunting imagery shine as she dissects her life experiences with striking candor and self-awareness. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor