Top 10 books about the body

Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body and the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded, which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. With Susannah Nevison, she is also the coauthor of the poetry collection In The Field Between Us.

At the Guardian Brown tagged ten books "across genres, and styles, and periods, that influenced the writing of ... Places I’ve Taken My Body and the living that led to it." One title on the list:

Poster Child by Emily Rapp Black

At the most basic level, this is a memoir about growing up as an amputee. Rapp Black’s left foot was amputated at the age of four as the result of a congenital defect, and the title refers to the time she spent as a poster child for the US nonprofit March of Dimes. But the book is really a look at what it means to come of age in a culture that impels you to despise yourself. Sharp and smart, this book has been essential company for me in both adolescence and adulthood.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue