Thanks to everybody who joined Monday’s book-club discussion of Feminism Against Progress. Our next read, in late August or early September, will be Hadley Freeman’s Good Girls:
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????”
From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through “sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor” (The Wall Street Journal), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia—the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage—and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades.
Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.
If you’re new around here—or not so new but just not sure how to join book club—you can learn more about it here! But the short version is: all paid subscribers are welcome to join. We meet once every four or five weeks for about two hours. We’ve got a good mix of ages (20s to 70s and everything in between) and life experiences and personalities and expertise. And no matter the topic, it’s a laidback, thought-provoking, and fun conversation!
(And if you want to try it out without committing to a paid subscription, you can always line up a seven-day free trial with a book-club meeting and see if it’s a good fit for you.)
—Eliza
I heard Hadley’s interview on The Unspeakable podcast a few months back, and I’ve been looking forward to reading this ever since! I had what I’d always considered an atypical experience with anorexia back in college, but some of what Hadley said made me realize my experiences might be less uncommon that I’d thought. So I’m very curious to read this one, and to participate in the upcoming discussion.