The Body Papers, Grace Talusan
The Body Papers, Grace Talusan
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The Body Papers

Author: Grace Talusan

Narrator: Grace Talusan

Unabridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/30/2019


Synopsis

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family's ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Contains mature themes.

About Grace Talusan

Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. She graduated from Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine. She is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan teaches at Grub Street and Tufts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas

Grace Talusan’s memoir The Body Papers is stunning in its self-awareness, honesty, and unassuming beauty. She writes about moving from the Philippines to the United states as a child, experiencing sexual abuse from her grandfather, and navigating cancer later on in life. These topics are often dark......more

There is so much to admire in this brave and fierce and deeply intimate memoir, most notably the author's unsentimental and plainspoken approach to her material. There are no fireworks of language here, no false flourishes designed to obscure or somehow extract beauty from the events she recounts wi......more

I am blown away by Grace! Full review to come. ---------- TLDR: I’m recommending The Body Papers to everyone; strike that. This is required reading. Ugh. This book had me bawling. Stunning and sincere, Grace Talusan tells her story as a Filipina immigrant in America after her father got accepted into a......more

Goodreads review by Maria

I am the American-born daughter of Philippine immigrants. This book is beautiful - her writing metaphorical and full of imagery, yet sometimes the Talusan book is too much for me and I have to put it down. She taps into the weight of being an immigrant daughter, that your parents sacrificed everythi......more