Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
“People have always liked to read confessional work, and they often liked to denigrate it as well. It was a popular style, then it wasn’t, then it was again.”
Body Work by Melissa Febos isn’t a straightforward how-to-write memoir guide. But, Febos’ blend of memoir and cultural criticism is a master class in the art, craft, practicalities, and ethics of writing personal non-fiction.
I read this last year, but I have been thinking of it again after reading literary agent Rachel Mills’ article in The Bookseller about whether the publishing industry does enough to protect authors who write memoirs. At under 200 pages, the four essays in Body Work examine the complexities of putting yourself on the page.
In Praise of Navel-Gazing is a defence of the very term regularly used to dismiss memoir and other forms of life writing, especially women’s writing, navel-gazing. Febos contends that “Navel-gazing is not for the faint of heart. The risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery.” She also reminds us that men’s personal stories are usually not considered navel-gazing.
Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex explores the politics of desire, sexuality, gender, and how the patriarchy impacts how we write about sex. A writing exercise Febos gets her students to do is write about their sex life in five sentences. She then asks them to do this three more times without repeating anything. The aim is to show that (a) their writing gets better and (b) they won’t run out of ways to tell their stories.
A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing About Other People is my standout essay of the collection. Febos shares what she has learned from different experiences of writing about other people in her work and how those people reacted. In some cases, Febos let them know beforehand. In others, she didn’t. In some cases, she obscured people’s identities. In others, she didn’t. It’s fascinating to see how Febos’ approach to this has evolved. I especially appreciated the acknowledgement that “The published word of a writer will last longer than that of any person who is not a public figure.”
In The Return: The Art of Confession, Febos looks at the history of confessional writing, including the origins of the word confessional. Febos makes clear that memoir and personal non-fiction have always existed, there are times when it is more popular than others, but it isn’t going to disappear as an art form any time soon.
While Febos has much to teach writers of personal non-fiction in its many forms, readers of the genre will also enjoy these essays.
You can’t tell from the photo above that my copy is dog-eared, covered in sticky tabs, underlined paragraphs, and notes scribbled in the margins, which is how most of my Melissa Febos books end up. The exception is Girlhood which I read on my Kindle, but I ordered a physical copy to add notes while rereading.
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos is published by Catapult (in the US) and Manchester University Press (in Europe) and is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.
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