Ladyparts A memoir

Deborah Copaken

Book - 2021

"Breasts. Uterus. Cervix. Heart. Vagina. The source of life, right? Well, for writer and photographer Deborah Copaken, it turned out to be just the opposite--almost. Between escaping from an abusive marriage, facing down the challenge of single-parenthood, and attempting to find love again, getting her bearings after everything she knew fell to pieces proved more slippery than she ever could have anticipated. From a Fourth of July health scare that brings new meaning to the words rocket's red glare, to wearing a giant heart monitor while out on dates to try and mend a heart both literally and figuratively broken, Lady Parts is Copaken's irreverent inventory of the female body and all the ailments that can befall it. Copaken&#...039;s Lady Parts mines for irony the breakdown of a body during a time of intense spiritual and psychological upheaval, and paints with both black humor and breathtaking candor the portrait of a woman in revolt. From bloodclots and breast exams, heart palpitations and heartbreaks, to the terror, loneliness, and empowerment of a woman fighting for her life, Copaken weaves her harrowing experiences together with insights from medical and historical research to show how many of these common health issues and disabilities merely amplify what women around the world confront on a daily basis: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies"--

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York : Random House [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Deborah Copaken (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xviii, 460 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781984855473
  • Author's Note
  • Preface
  • Part I. Vagina
  • 1. Fireworks
  • Part II. Uterus
  • 2. Lunch with Nora, Freds
  • 3. That Clear Blue Morning
  • 4. Lunch with Nora, East Hampton
  • 5. Empathy
  • 6. Escape
  • 7. Lunch with Nora, E.A.T.
  • 8. Where's the Husband?
  • Part III. Breast
  • 9. Landslide
  • 10. Chiaroscuro
  • 11. Yes, and...
  • 12. Health Today
  • 13. In Flagrante Delicto
  • 14. You Won the Lottery!
  • Part IV. Heart
  • 15. Inwood
  • 16. Money
  • 17. At the Still Point of the Turning World
  • 18. Bad Judgment
  • 19. Unrequited
  • 20. The Church for Wayward Hearts
  • 21. Lunch with Ken
  • Part V. Cervix
  • 22. Kind of a Tinder Date and Kind of Not
  • 23. Durkheim
  • 24. Public Relations
  • 25. Private Relations
  • 26. On-ramp
  • 27. Younger
  • 28. ENFP
  • 29. Little Buddha
  • 30. Bloody Mother's Day
  • 31. Hospitals Are Not My Thing
  • 32. My Day in Court (My Afternoon in Hospital)
  • Part VI. Brain
  • 33. Empty Brain
  • 34. #MeToo
  • 35. Cognitive Health
  • 36. Fuck Your Dumb Fire
  • Part VII. Lungs
  • 37. Make a Wish
  • 38. The Cost of Oxygen
  • 39. Fireworks Redux
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
Review by Booklist Review

In a candid, confessional voice, photojournalist and writer Copaken (Shutterbabe) chronicles her turbulent journey into situational poverty without healthcare after leaving a dysfunctional marriage. Shouldering marital and medical debt, faced with the serious needs of a damaged body, she had to enter the fraught reality of healthcare tied to employment, at the mercy of the corporate world's indifference to a single mother's childcare plight. Copaken, subject to the whims of capricious bosses in the changing landscape of journalism, endures sexist backlash both in the industry and from audiences against her writing about womanhood, which eventually worsens into acute sexual harassment. She channeled her experiences into this book, a feminist outcry exposing experiences and erasure of women in the corporate, journalism, and medical worlds. By reconstructing the story of each of her ailing body parts, she reconstructs her life and career, with each part serving as a metaphor for survival of traumas unique to women. At times darkly humorous, at times despondent, Copaken's very relatable memoir is a strong act of self-assertion.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Copaken (Shutterbabe), a contributing writer at the Atlantic, returns to memoir in this often flimsy tragicomedy of all the ways a woman can fall apart. Structuring the work as an inventory of body parts (uterus, cervix, heart), Copaken tells war stories of ailments (including a near-fatal hysterectomy), divorce, sexual harassment, and literal battles as a combat photographer in the '80s to investigate the complicated relationship between her body and the patriarchal world she inhabits. She writes heartfelt tributes to the people who mentored her--including the late Nora Ephron, who used "the most humiliating parts of herself... as her superpower"--and skillfully explores the roots of her own emotional undoing, exacerbated by medical bills and her father's death in 2008. While funny and tender, the work's tone is frustratingly inconsistent; Copaken can careen from being urgent at one moment to deeply indulgent the next, while some anecdotes hit with a thud, as with a story about a fight with her now ex-husband in which she "strained vocal cords until they broke," which, Copaken offhandedly explains, was particularly tragic because she planned to perform a live storytelling at the 92nd Street Y later that day, undermining the tension almost completely. The tangle of platitudes yields an amorphous, rushed-feeling narrative. Copaken takes a fresh approach to difficult topics, but the delivery is lacking. (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

In her newest work, Copaken (The Red Book; Between Here and April) recounts key moments from her battles with multiple illnesses and their treatments. The narrative picks up just after the publication of Copaken's 2001 memoir Shutterbabe, after which she starts a writing career that becomes more precarious when journalism jobs begin to vanish in the 2010s. When Copaken becomes ill, she needs treatment that forces her to navigate the United States health care system, with inadequate insurance coverage and unstable finances. Then her marriage begins to crumble, and she must figure out divorce, dating, and raising children as a single mother. Copaken's strain is palpable as setbacks pile up; she's constantly having to hustle to the next job, doctor's appointment, or freelance gig. She also struggles with career disillusionment and is sexually harassed at one of her workplaces. Copaken manages to overcome the obstacles and achieve her own success; she lands TV writing opportunities and spends meaningful time with her friends and children. Copaken's memoir ends with her experience during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Written in a diary-like format, her memoir includes the occasional photograph. VERDICT A searing indictment of capitalism, the gig economy, and the U.S. medical system--all recounted with a sense of dark humor. Copaken's latest will engage readers of feminist memoirs.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A bestselling author and former war photographer chronicles a decade of personal traumas by examining the malfunctioning body parts associated with each new upheaval. Copaken, author of both fiction and nonfiction, reflects on personal crises by connecting bodily scars and their roles in her life. She begins with the graphic story of how, in the middle of a divorce, she suffered a ' "vaginal cuff dehiscence': the clinical name for uh-oh, the stitches where they sewed up the top of your vaginal canal have come undone, and now you're a blood clot howitzer." The closing image of that section--in a hospital, "bleeding body on a slab, arms spread, wrists bound"--establishes the primary textual metaphor of the suffering female body. The author then explores other afflicted body parts and the troubles that dominated her life. In discussing her uterus, for example, she recalls how a hysterectomy coincided with both the end of her marriage and the death of her mentor and friend Nora Ephron. This was followed by a breast lump and the financial problems caused by marital separation. By 2014, at age 48, after she lost a job and started to date again, Copaken developed the heart palpitations doctors diagnose as PVCs. A few years later, a diagnosis of precancerous cervical lesions put a pause on a newly flourishing romantic life that included sympathetic younger men. The string of overwhelmingly bad luck continued into 2020, when the author contracted Covid-19 while trying to manage a urinary tract infection. Throughout this often overly detailed, highly informative, photographically illustrated memoir, Copaken uses her misfortunes to comment on, among other issues, corporate policies that force working women/mothers out of jobs; income inequality; female sexual harassment; and the many complications of the American unemployment system. The result is a conceptually unique narrative from a talented author that is sometimes undercut by informational excess. Overlong but sharp and funny and always extremely candid. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

ONE Fireworks July 2, 2017 I'm crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not metaphor. They are actual pieces. Plum-sized, beet-colored, with the consistency and sheen of chicken liver, three of them have shot out of me like shells from a cannon. I am bleeding out. But my brain, starved of blood and in shock at the sight of so much of it, cannot process this information. Instead, I've become convinced that the ordnance sliding around my bathroom floor are my internal organs, which I must rescue so someone can put them back inside me. I head to the kitchen to hunt for Tupperware. Not just any Tupperware. The glass kind. Heaven forbid my liver and kidney should come into contact with BPAs. It does not occur to me, in my befuddled state, that had my internal organs actually fallen from my body, I would not have the pulse with which to rummage in my kitchen cabinet in search of a container to store them. It is Saturday night--no, now Sunday morning, just after midnight--of the July Fourth weekend, 2017. Pads and underwear have become useless against these pyrotechnics, so it's just me and my bathrobe, hemorrhaging. Outside, bootleg fireworks are erupting into the sky. Inside, gravity has forced another palm-sized chunk to plunge--splat!--onto the kitchen floor. And the rocket's red glare, indeed: Happy Independence Day to me! (Added bonus, I'm mid-divorce.) I scoop up the large mass and put it in the glass container with the others. With the blobs now safely stored in carcinogen-free glass on the top shelf of my fridge--I've seen enough medical procedurals to know about the importance, when transporting human organs, of picnic coolers--I call the answering service for my surgeon, who three weeks earlier had removed my cervix. This post-op emergency, which I'm not yet prepared to call an emergency, is unusual. In fact, of all trachelectomies--that's the clinical name for cervix removal--performed in the U.S., only a small percentage result in "vaginal cuff dehiscence": the clinical name for uh-oh, the stitches where they sewed up the top of your vaginal canal have come undone, and now you're a blood clot howitzer. I am twelve hours, without medical intervention, from my own death. Possibly less. At this point, however, I know none of this. Neither the number of hours I have left nor the technical name for what's happening. I just know I'm exhausted and bleeding profusely. That I'm still deep in the weeds of recovering from major surgery. That I'd already gone to the emergency room near family court six days after surgery, after nearly passing out from pain while representing myself at a custody hearing, but the hospital had sent me home, saying everything looked fine. I am loath to cry wolf again. But my apartment looks like a crime scene. So I'm crying medium-sized dog, possibly rabid. Alas, no one from the hospital is calling me back, so I'm crying into the void anyway. I call the answering service again. I text them a photo of one of the masses in the palm of my hand for size context. Nada. I feel like medicine's needy girlfriend, ghosted by the hospital. It has now magically jumped from midnight to 1:30 in the morning. Like a Truffaut film. Qu'est-ce que c'est, degueulasse? What is disgusting? I mean, for starters, the bathroom floor. Part of me can't help but wonder if all of these bloody missiles are, in fact, metaphor: the expulsion of decades of marital sludge. But while I am grateful for my escape from a toxic, lonely marriage, I've recently been as alone as I've ever been, as lonely as I've ever felt. My eldest has been living with his girlfriend in Bangkok, where he's teaching English. My youngest is away at summer camp. My middle one has been in the Middle East, so I've been walking the dog and doing the dishes and taking out the trash and lugging laundry back and forth from the communal laundry room in the basement on my own. None of these tasks are on the list of acceptable activities on the hospital handout they give you when they kick you out the morning after surgery and tell you to rest. But having been recently downsized, I can't afford the added cost of a home health aide. Or, frankly, food or shelter. Aside from the few freelance gigs I've been able to cobble together from bed, I now have zero income combined with an extra $2,314.20 a month in COBRA fees, which has always struck me as one of the more insulting cosmic ironies of losing a job in America: Bye! Have a nice life! Here's zero months of severance plus an extra rent's worth of healthcare costs. The rest of the night becomes fuzzy, as I slip in and out of consciousness, so I'll just mention the scenes I do remember in the order I think they occurred. This is not me trying to sound postmodern. It's just the jump-cut way in which I recall them, devoid of the normal transitions that streamline a narrative. "Hey, sweetie, sorry to wake you . . ." I finally wake my sleeping daughter, feeling guilty about so doing. She's just arrived home from Tel Aviv, after many layovers and no sleep. Birthright wasn't around when I was her age, so my first trip to Israel was also my first assignment as a photojournalist, to cover the first intifada. Rocks and CNN trucks. The boys would always wait around for the trucks to show up before throwing their rocks. McLuhan was right. The medium is always the message. What are these blobs trying to transmit to me? "I think my kidney fell out," I say to my daughter, clutching my mystery masses, "so I might have to go to the hospital. But you stay here with Lucas and walk him in the morning." Lucas is our dog. Like all dogs, he hates fireworks. To self-soothe, he's been sitting on my face. My daughter's bleary eyes widen. She is staring at the contents of my Tupperware container. The crack of fireworks. Technicolor bursts outside the window. The dog barks. The world spins. "Mom! Oh my god! That's not your kidney. If it were your kidney, you'd be dead." She examines the blobs, unsqueamish. She's premed, studying neuroscience. "I think they're giant blood clots," she says. "We have to get you to the hospital. Now." "I'm tired. And no one's calling me back. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow." She gets up and notes the pools of blood on the bathroom floor. In my bed. Down the hallway. In the kitchen near the refrigerator. I did my best to clean up the mess until I ran out of paper towels. "Are you kidding? Let's go. I'm calling 911." "No! Absolutely not. We can't afford it." I'm currently living off the remains of my meager 401K, facing a huge tax penalty for its early withdrawal. After months of illness followed by major surgery with copays and monthly COBRA fees, I have just under $3,000 in cash reserves left and zero credit cards. I've read too many cautionary tales of surprise bills as high as $8,000 for ambulance transport. I'm hemorrhaging enough already. "Fine," she says, "call an Uber." I remain firm. "No. I'll take the subway. And you're not coming with me. You have to stay here with the dog." She doesn't listen. I am being pulled outside by the arm. Streetlamps. Darkness. I smell pot. "No one says pot anymore," says my daughter. "It's weed. Call an Uber. Now!" The numbers 1:43 a.m. atop the smiles of my three sun-kissed children on the face of my phone. I search for the white U inside the little black square, remembering that 143, according to Mr. Rogers, equals I love you. Funny how that stuff stays. I=1; love=4; you=3. It took me a while to figure out the code. "I love you," I tell my daughter. UberPool is half the price of UberX, so I choose that. Your driver will be Faraj. How many other passengers could Faraj possibly have at 1:43 in the morning? None, as it will turn out. If I live, I can use the money I'll save to replenish our supply of paper towels. My daughter squeezes my hand. "I love you, too." More fireworks. It feels like we're in a movie. I'd rather be in bed. My daughter to the driver: "Yes, it's an emergency!" Warm blood. Lots of it. Under me. On the seat of the Uber, down my legs, pooling in my shoes. An uber pool in an UberPool. I feel awful for the mess my body has unleashed. An apology to Faraj. "Don't worry," he says. "Just go. God bless." Two decades earlier, when my water had broken all over the floor of a taxi, the driver had spoken those exact words. Don't worry. Just go. God bless. Excerpted from Ladyparts: A Memoir by Deborah Copaken All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.