Hysterical is staggeringly good. I am speechless, which as a reader, is a rare thing for me. I really just have a bunch of blubbering accolades to shower on Elissa. This is one of the most intelligent, painful, ridiculous, awesome, relevant things I've ever read. I am impressed.” —Roxane Gay
"In her dazzling memoir, Elissa Bassist cuts right to the heart and delivers an intimate, unexpected, funny, and original yet universal story about voice and silence and illness. Hysterical is an impressive debut. Elissa Bassist wrote it like a motherfucker."—Cheryl Strayed
“Funny and furious and sharp and bursting with everything we’re urged to hold inside, Elissa Bassist’s Hysterical is a god damn delight.”—Rebecca Traister
“I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Elissa's writing. That was five loves....Quite a special, strong, funny voice."—Joey Soloway, creator/writer/director/Emmy-award winner of Transparent
"One of the qualities I appreciated most about Hysterical is the way the author subtly and gracefully links her deeply personal life story to compelling questions about women’s sexuality, literature, history. We never notice her doing the connecting; the larger themes and analysis are seamlessly woven into the intimate story. She makes us think and care about not simply what happened to her, but about women’s bodies, our continued detachment from our own desire, our own complicity in the culture of sexual violence…This artful, moving work of creative nonfiction transcends the self, while keeping us rooted in the most intimate of stories.” —Danzy Senna, bestselling author of Caucasia and judge of the New School Chapbook Competition
"Before reading [Hysterical], I hadn’t found much literature (especially witty literature) on how misogyny shows up in the body. What a relief to find a book that articulates so many frustrating and familiar experiences; I couldn’t put my highlighter down.... Hysterical examines who gets to speak and why, society’s fascination with dead girls, the “rape-culture iceberg,” and how to reclaim your voice."—The Cut
"Bassist’s memoir is both a detailed diagnostic and a measured prescription for women, specifically American women and all those who have the capacity for pregnancy, at this particularly patriarchal juncture in a post-Roe time. At once self-examining and dismantling, Bassist’s unflinching wit and dry humor deliver a hybrid, almost mosaic, memoir that weaves personal essay, feminist criticism, research, and social commentary."—Chicago Review of Books
"Part memoir, part cultural critique, part manifesto, Hysterical is a tour de force, a powerful response and critique of the subjugation of girls and women across all aspects of our culture—healthcare, workplaces, dating and sex (heterosexual, that is), pop culture (publishing, television, film), and of language itself. 'Patriarchy,' she writes, 'is our mother tongue and preexisting condition.' "—New York Journal of Books
"Disruptive, tender, and beautiful, this book is a reversal of women’s apologies and a demand for more."—Library Journal Starred Review
"A sharp examination of life in “a culture where men speak and women shut up"... [Bassist's] memoir stands as proof of an arduous process of healing. A fiery cultural critique."
—Kirkus Review
"Bassist's resounding voice will echo in readers' heads long after they have finished the book. This book a reckoning with an unjust power system that hurts everyone."—Booklist
"To be a woman is to relate to Elissa Bassist’s fierce and funny new memoir, Hysterical, a searing indictment of the patriarchal and misogynistic medical system that so often belittles, ignores, and seeks to silence women’s voices. ... Thus, this impassioned memoir, which critiques “a culture where men speak and women shut up,” was born, and Bassist became definitively uncaged. Hysterical is for the women who are tired of being ignored, shamed, overmedicated, and misunderstood."—Shondaland
"Part-memoir, part-manifesto, Hysterical asks women to tap into their anger, sadness, and joy— and to no longer silence themselves in the face of misogyny and the patriarchy."—The Millions - Most Anticipated
"Hysterical felt like a kind of a breakthrough, a celebratory whoop and a call to action all in one, even for someone who has identified as a feminist for decades. As I finished it, I found myself wanting to press it into the hands of everyone I know because whether it is a revelation or a reminder, Hysterical is part of the essential story of being female today."—Datebook, San Francisco Chronicle
"Bassist’s command of prose is as honed as the muscles of an Olympic gymnast. Her intelligence shines; her wit is so dry it is parched. A humorist by trade, she earned her battle scars in comedy, a field which has made some strides towards inclusion but where the majority view still seems to be that the best way to be a funny woman is to be funny, or a woman, but not both at once."—Hippocampus Magazine
"Bassist manages to be funny, precise, and intimate while dissecting the mess of modern feminism—wow, women can have it all!"—Electric Lit
"[Hysterical] touches on so many things that ... women deal with in the world. It weaves the science in — in a great way where you're both reading about what this woman has gone through, but you're learning something at the same time."—Daisy Rosario, NPR
★ 07/01/2022
It is no secret that the medical field ignores, underfunds, and looks away from issues that affect women. It also tends to layer new words on old allegations that women's symptoms are manifestations of hysteria instead of attempting to understand them. Bassist, who writes the "Funny Women" column on The Rumpus, has bravely used the story of her body as it has been overwritten by insufficient, inefficient medical discourses to offer answers for women who feel as if they inhabit "a body that didn't make sense to science, a psyche that didn't make sense to mankind in general." Like Tillie Olson, Susan Bordo, and so many feminist theorists before her, Bassist explores the silencing acts that keep women small. She also explores the ways in which finding a voice requires women to take up space in ways that transgress expectations by insisting on the female body's inherent rightness—something society still does not believe. VERDICT Disruptive, tender, and beautiful, this book is a reversal of women's apologies and a demand for more—Emily Bowles
2022-07-07
A sharp examination of life in “a culture where men speak and women shut up.”
In her impassioned debut memoir, essayist and humor writer Bassist rails against the systemic misogyny and patriarchy that silence women’s voices and, for her, became embodied as pain. For more than a year, she searched for medical help for a persistent headache and backache, blurred vision, and stomach problems only to be told repeatedly that nothing was wrong with her. “I had what millions of American women had,” she writes, “pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, a psyche that didn’t make sense to mankind in general.” Like many women throughout history, she was deemed hysterical, and she was prescribed sedatives and mood stabilizers, some of which made her symptoms worse. When an acupuncturist suggested that her pain was caused by “caged fury,” Bassist felt a sudden sense of clarity. She examines many sources of her anger, including her overbearing father, emotionally and physically violent boyfriends, and a culture that defines outspoken women as “crazy psycho bitches.” In TV and movies, women are victims of extreme violence; in the media, and in her writing classes, men’s voices and opinions dominate. “Men’s writing was ‘writing,’ ” she learned when working in publishing, “and women’s writing was ‘women’s writing,’ ” or “chick lit.” Instead of learning to stand up for herself, she admits, she got better “at acclimating. At expecting abuse.” “To cope with being silenced in my twenties,” she writes, “I choose silence in my thirties.” Obsessively fearful of saying the wrong thing or of being retaliated against, she refused to share her experiences on social media, and she plummeted into self-doubt. “I hated myself and other women as much as the world hated us,” she writes, “because when hatred is environmental, anyone can catch it, then perpetuate it, until women are misogynistic masochists with toxic masculinity.” Her memoir stands as proof of an arduous process of healing.
A fiery cultural critique.
