Autobiography of a Face [Thirtieth Anniversary Edition]

Book excerpt: ”So many memoirs make you feel that you’ve been sealed up inside a wall with a monomaniac. A really good one, like Autobiography of a Face, makes you feel there is more to ask and learn. You are not just seeing the writer; you are not trying to see yourself. You are seeing the world in a different way.”—Margo Jefferson Foreword by Suleika Jaouad, author of the New York Times bestseller Between Two Kingdoms A thirtieth-anniversary edition of Lucy Grealy’s celebrated memoir, a timeless exploration of identity, loneliness, the nature of beauty, and strength. Thirty years ago, Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face launched the young writer into the top echelons of contemporary literature, winning her both acclaim and fame. An incandescent tale of perseverance, humor, and deep introspection in the face of emotional and physical pain, her powerful memoir—as evocative and resonant today as it was in 1994—speaks to us across time. At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a potentially terminal cancer, undergoing years of chemotherapy that destroyed a third of her jawbone. When she eventually returned to school, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. It took her twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty years of reconstructive procedures before she began to come to terms with her appearance. This beautiful and timeless memoir is a tale of great suffering and remarkable strength told without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Grealy reflects on how cancer transformed her face and her life, and captures what it was like as a child and a young adult to be torn between wanting to be loved for who we are and desperately wishing to be perfect.