... an explanation of why stories like Febos’s are powerful, and moreover, why they take so much work. In their attempts to write in the confessional form, my students inevitably encounter dilemmas—including struggles over sentence sequencing and the fear of problematic ex-boyfriends reading their work—that Febos wants to help resolve ... Febos maintains an emphasis on form that is nicely balanced throughout the book by some charming, low-level woo-woo ... Even when Febos reaches a thesis that I disagree with, I’m persuaded by her argument for the need for creative honesty ... Body Work helped me learn how to work alongside and through my ongoing pain by forging a creative outlet. I’m grateful to Febos for the lesson in how to do it.
In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill ... Febos rejects these belittlements with eloquence ... In its hybridity, this book formalizes one of Febos’s central tenets within it: that there is no disentangling craft from the personal, just as there is no disentangling the personal from the political. It’s a memoir of a life indelibly changed by literary practice and the rigorous integrity demanded of it ... Febos is an essayist of grace and terrific precision, her sentences meticulously sculpted, her paragraphs shapely and compressed ... what’s fresh, of course, is Febos herself, remapping this terrain through her context, her life and writing, her unusual combinations of sources (William H. Gass meets Elissa Washuta, for example), her painstaking exactitude and unflappable sureness—and the new readers she will reach with all of this.
Although the essays in what is arguably [Febos'] latest act of service to that questionable project are all personal narratives themselves (as opposed to straight-up craft essays with clear dos and don'ts for the aspiring or practicing writer), they also provide practical and philosophical arguments for the expansiveness that such narratives allow and for their power in the world ... Rather than believing the narrative that stories of trauma are dull or overdone or whiney or gauche, Febos encourages her readers to tell their stories, to write them, for themselves or others. In this way, Body Work, is in itself an example of the strength of personal narrative; it's also an argument for how such narratives inevitably create space for community as well as a freer self.
A lazy categorization would describe Body Work as 'part memoir, part craft book, part literary treatise.' But Febos’s work defies this kind of segmentation. Each of her books contains multitudes, seamlessly coalesced into a single truth-seeking missile. Her trademark magic is in the melding ... Febos offers a compelling rebuttal of the accusation that a memoir is simply a diary in print ... asks the fundamental questions with which our literature, and our culture, are currently grappling. Which version of the story is yours, which is mine, which is true? Is there room in our American house for more than one story, or more than one version of the same story?
... a call to action, a protest song, an organizing principle, and perhaps the only book you need on memoir writing. Its style, subject, and thesis reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint, an abstract painter who created her work through a process that straddled scientific research and divination. Both Febos and af Klint share the belief that art should be in service of liberation, of creating a more just and equitable society. And for the most part, their strategies to achieve liberation are in harmony ... What is truly revolutionary about Melissa Febos’ Body Work and Hilma af Klint’s oeuvre is the dedication to envisioning new futures that sings through their work. These artists teach us that the future is made brighter and better by treating art-as-practice with reverence and open-hearted curiosity. Our work is to see clearly, feel deeply, to write and create truthfully, to keep the channel between ourselves and beyond open ... [Febos] is a keen social critic, and she makes a cogent argument as to why women’s writing about trauma has been dismissed as unartistic, trite, and self-indulgent ... Her essays are well researched, and much of the excitement here comes from the way in which she curates writing from Native and other non-mainstream voices ... Even though Body Work is not meant to be a manual on memoir writing, it offers a useful, nuanced take on many issues that come up when tackling any sort of nonfiction...It is moments like this where her vulnerability and thoughtfulness are truly illuminating ... The must-read Body Work is a captivating, eloquent paean to the power of working through a 'pain that has been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.' In its pages, Melissa Febos posits self-appraisal as a brave act that is both intensely personal and also communal.
... a call to action, a protest song, an organizing principle, and perhaps the only book you need on memoir writing. Its style, subject, and thesis reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint, an abstract painter who created her work through a process that straddled scientific research and divination. Both Febos and af Klint share the belief that art should be in service of liberation, of creating a more just and equitable society. And for the most part, their strategies to achieve liberation are in harmony ... What is truly revolutionary about Melissa Febos’ Body Work and Hilma af Klint’s oeuvre is the dedication to envisioning new futures that sings through their work. These artists teach us that the future is made brighter and better by treating art-as-practice with reverence and open-hearted curiosity. Our work is to see clearly, feel deeply, to write and create truthfully, to keep the channel between ourselves and beyond open.
As a writing instructor I found myself underlining passage after passage, eager to read them aloud to my own nonfiction students who oohed and ahhed in recognition, just as I’d expected ... This is a generous-hearted book, a wise, and you go, girl empowering book, yet there’s a regrettable thinness to Body Work. The book is composed of just four essays, including two previously published and available online. Even with wide margins, and extensive quoting from outside texts which widen the margins further, the book comes in at just over 160 pages. As I read, I couldn’t help but think that after her last collection became a 2021 bestseller, Febos felt pressure to get another book out. Body Work is good but not great. More than why I write, or how I write, I would have loved to see how to write well. Less Maimonides and more Melissa, please.
I hoped Body Work would offer tools, exercises, questions, organizing principles, and creative approaches to building a story in sentences and paragraphs, the stuff that makes up a masterclass. At the very least I wanted something that would legitimize calling the collection of these four essays a craft book ... The aim to tell 'stories so that specificity reveals some larger truth' is no secret of high quality writing and the idea is so often repeated in adult writing centers, workshops, and in craft books it appears trite no matter how applicable it is ... One of Febos’ strengths as a writer is to make connections among poetry, philosophy, psychology, religion, and art. In her earlier books, her essays surprise and delight with ideas from writers and thinkers across disciplines and add depth and dimension to her first-person narratives. Sources cited in Body Work are paltry in comparison and include a CDC study, a New Yorker article here and there, the poet Eileen Myles, and the Torah among others. Febos’ body of work is unique and interesting because she uses extensive research into ideas across genre and time period and connects them to larger, more complex points about her experience. The threads connecting to bigger ideas in this slim volume are fewer and further between than her previous books, and the lack rhetorical heft that might make this book as instructive as it claims to be.
For Febos, personal narrative is a literary endeavour. Of the many texts on the subject, this one feels most engaging and timely ... Febos dedicates this volume to her students, but it will be of interest to all readers, writers and potential writers of personal narrative, as well as anyone interested in the mysterious way the creative spirit moves through an artist brave enough to engage it, and embrace it in return.
Organized into four slim chapters that cover, among other subjects, writing about other people and writing about sex, it answers many of the questions that readers of Febos’ earlier work might have about those books ... Body Work’s most fundamental premise, though, is an invitation to her readers to engage in similar work, after recognizing their own experiences as worth writing about no matter how much the mainstream overlords of writing might reject what they have to say as too niche; too overdone; or, Febos writes, mere 'navel gazing' ... If this sounds intimidating, I assure you—as a straight white woman, trying to be both happy and ethical, with a mind awhir with gleaming gears of unattributed design—it is, but it also isn’t. What I appreciate about Febos’ project is that it is not so doctrinal as to paralyze. Febos, who is unfailingly a generous and compassionate writer, does not require of us women writers the wholesale rejection of the systems in which we grew up and from which we are as inseparable as anyone else inside the capitalist maw ... The ethics of Body Work are not necessarily that we writers and lovers must achieve perfect consistency between our behaviors (shopping at Sephora) and our politics (beauty standards are harmful) ... There is a significant caveat, though, to this idea that Febos is teaching us not how to write, but how to be. As Febos points out, women writers who write about their experience of being women are asked by their interviewers not about the writing, but about those experiences themselves—as if the writer had not already carefully said what she wanted to say on that subject in the book.
... concise yet weighty work ... These forthright essays make a clear case for writing as (incidentally) therapeutic. Practical and empowering, they prepare would-be writers for an 'emotional confrontation with the self' ... These forthright essays...exemplify the art of honing autobiographical narratives that free the writer from shame.
... envelops readers in a generously healing vision of memoir writing. Melissa Febos teaches us that we can embrace personal writing as a way of growing through immense pain, and that writing will guide us—physically, emotionally, spiritually, politically—toward that version of ourselves we need to become.
Febos dedicates her latest book to her students. After reading the book in one sitting, I feel as though I am one of them, a kind of disciple of the author’s patience and deep well of wisdom ... seamlessly offers an insight into the author’s creative processes as it invites the reader to explore their own. Because of this juxtaposition, I learned many important concepts in this stunning book, and never for a moment felt dashed by them. This is more remarkable than it sounds. Too often in reading craft books, one is in awe of how someone whose work they admire approaches their art yet feels discouraged that they could ever write as compellingly ... Quite the opposite lessons were true in reading Body Work. Febos leaves ample room for readers to partake of her insights and move forward in their own unique ways ... Febos’s ego is decidedly absent from the discourse — a true teacher, the best kind. When I got to the last page and closed the book with a sigh of admiration, I realized how optimistic I felt: worthy of attending to my voice and the subjects I wanted to explore ... There are specific notes of brilliance and insight in each chapter ... This single book provides an exhaustive reading list that would benefit a writing student for years.
Staying true to her message that writing about the self can make for great and even transcendent art, Febos includes many gripping personal anecdotes in a book that remains instructive to its core. Above all, Febos offers the space and tools to reflect, rethink, revisit, and reimagine—in service of good writing, and good living—with grains of truth that reader-writers will want to keep close.
Febos’s newest book is not a story about her body; rather, it is written through and with her sexual and physical experiences in such a way that it radically destabilizes boundaries between meaning, intelligibility, corporeality, intimacy, and so much more—all through the practice of storytelling. This is a book for both writers and readers who feel like their bodies are telling stories, even if they do not ever want to put those stories into words ... Wide-ranging in its theoretical and historical breadth yet intimate in all ways, Febos’s book offers the tools readers need to identify, access, process, and articulate hard-won stories of trauma and of love that their flesh holds.
Whip-smart ... Febos’s fellow scribes will appreciate her shrewd takes on the intersection of craft and life, and even nonwriters will enjoy the artistry on display throughout. This is a wonder.
Febos takes no prisoners in this strongly worded manifesto—despite her claim on the first page that it is not a manifesto. In fact, her impassioned theses and proclamations about writing are exactly that ... The author’s exhortations with regard to craft...are crucial ... Sharp insights from a passionate practitioner and champion of memoir.
