Lessons In Taxidermy: A Compendium of Safety and Danger (Punk Planet Books) - Softcover

Lavender, Bee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888451793 ISBN 13: 9781888451795

Publisher: Akashic Books,U.S., 2005

Synopsis

"Bee Lavender is a fantastic writer. Her work is deep and personal, and I don't think there are any places she's scared to go." --Michelle Tea, author of The Chelsea Whistle

"Bee's scrupulous, non-histrionic style is thrilling; it allows for some devastating emotional moments because the author comes by them honestly." --Ayun Halliday, author of No Touch Monkey

Diagnosed with cancer at age twelve and perilously pregnant at eighteen, surviving surgeries and violent accidents: sometimes you can't believe Bee Lavender is still alive; sometimes you think nothing could kill her. Lessons in Taxidermy is Lavender's fierce and expressive search for truth and an elusive sense of safety. This autobiographical tale is stark and resolved, but strangely euphoric, tying together moments and memories into a frantic, delicate, and often transcendently funny account of anguish and confusion, pain and poverty, isolation and illusion. While staying conscious of the particulars of her circumstances, Lavender frames her life in the context of history, traveling, landscape, and freak show culture. Lessons in Taxidermy is apocryphal, troubling, cathartic, and important.

About this title

Review:

"Bee Lavender is a fantastic writer. Her work is deep and personal and I don't think there are any places she's scared to go."

From the Publisher:

"Lavender . . . holds nothing back as she recounts her life spent in and out of hospitals and her subsequent dissociation from her own body and emotions. She struggles with health problems from birth, which are compounded by her surroundings, including frequent encounters with street fights, domestic violence and poverty. Her voice is as strong as the front she puts up for the multitude of doctors she sees, and it’s hard not to be in awe of what one fragile human being can withstand in the course of such a short lifetime . . . witnessing her strength and sheer determination to live makes this striking book completely engrossing." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lavender has written a stunning memoir about her near-fatal illnesses, and how undergoing the pains, fears and indignities of constant surgeries shaped her childhood and adolescence in a working-class Washington State family . . . Feel sympathy you will. But mostly you’ll be stirred by the excitement of having met such an introspective narrator." —Time Out New York

"In her polished, gripping memoir, Hip Mama–publisher Bee Lavender chronicles her life-on-the-verge-of-death . . . Lavender’s thankfulness for the strange but beautiful gifts her life has given her is inspiring, as is the book itself." —BUST

"In sifting through her unwanted memories, poking at the still-raw scars and bruises, Lavender shows how it is possible to transcend the body and its demands, to construct a whole and rewarding life out of a fractured past." —Bitch Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Akashic Books,U.S.
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1888451793
• ISBN 13: 9781888451795
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 225