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Disease Is a Mirror

A Lyric Memoir

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Interweaving imagery and prose, Disease Is a Mirror is a lyric memoir exploring illness, identity, intimacy, and the evolving self. Greenquist initially chronicles, and then artfully abstracts, her story, opening “the mirrored door” to the elusive realities of a life-changing diagnosis. Her narrative shows us that a diagnosis is not merely a clinical timeline; it is snails and rabbits, code and lab coats, love and clumsiness. Like an exquisite corpse, Disease Is a Mirror invites readers to explore its intricate and unconventional intersections, each reflection carefully curated; each void, a devastating erasure.

About The Author

Emily Greenquist currently navigates life with her husband in a small town near Chicago. Her recent writing appears in Syracuse University’s Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Nebulous Magazine, and Laughing Eye Weeping Eye’s The Colorful Tears Tarot guidebook. She was the lead role in ROMERO, a video art project with poet Olivia Cronk. Explore more at www.emilygreenquist.com.

Product Details

  • Publisher: She Writes Press (October 3, 2023)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781647426965

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Raves and Reviews

“In her revealing memoir/art project Disease Is a Mirror, Greenquist pursues both the idiosyncratic experience of a body and mind receiving diagnosis and proceeding with a new self, and the universal anxieties of a body and mind that refuse to conform. The book moves freely between exposition, dreams, comedy, art praxis, and textural metaphorizing. Greenquist makes her experiences into a kind of sphinx—that chimerical creature who riddles her way to an utterly inimitable vigor.”
—Olivia Cronk, poet and author of Womonster and Louise and Louise and Louise

“Emily Greenquist’s Disease Is a Mirror is a heterogeneous assemblage: image, language, diagram. It is confessional, epistolary, and scientific. And, like the collages and exquisite corpses filling up its pages, Greenquist’s book is a bricolage that gestures at the self’s indeterminacy and at the fixedness of that self as a remembered thing. Is the self, then, an obscured history? Or, as Greenquist writes, ‘I can never know the start of my story . . .’”
—Philip Sorenson, poet and author of Work Is Hard Vore and Solar Trauma

Disease Is a Mirror is a startling and humorous portrait of pain. Sharing her journey to diagnosis, Greenquist brilliantly weaves the scars from her past with the wounds of the present, selflessly baring all. Her story becomes a poignant snapshot of humanity, revealing not just her mirror but leading us to our own.”
—Rebecca Schoenecker, artist and author of The Colorful Tears Tarot and The Shadowspeak Oracle Deck

“The softly stunning Disease Is a Mirror is a rare gem, a deeply personal artifact, a glimpse into the soul. With unshakable tenderness and a characteristic winking eye, Emily Greenquist weaves a tapestry of her own artworks, family history, and explorations of physical and emotional wellbeing. This remarkable book—guiding us into the looking glass of illness to find dignity, humor, and humanity—is a work of art to hold close, like a treasure.”
—Alexander Attea, playwright of Arabia, Arabia! and The Creators

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