The New York Times Book Review - Luis H. Francia
Much of Grace Talusan's memoir, The Body Papers, will be familiar to any reader of immigrant narratives. But what renders the book memorable…is the author's unstinting self-portrait. We see Talusan clearly in the present, warts and all, precisely through the stark, lucid representations of herself in the past…[In] powerful, evocative scenes…Talusan chronicles that fraught passage from one world, one body, to another, marking with sensitivity how an American life can be both burden and benediction.
The New York Times - Jennifer Szalai
…[a] precise, delicately constructed memoir-in-essays…The Body Papers doesn't track a one-way march to triumph from adversity; Talusan's essays loop in on themselves, as she retrieves old memories and finds unexpected points of connection…Talusan describes [her] experiences with unadorned prose that conveys a startling specificity…This [is an] indelible book. Talusan has the instincts of a storyteller, teasing out her narrative through images and allusion.
New York Times Book Review - Luis H. Francia
“But what renders the book memorable — perhaps what earned it the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing — is the author’s unstinting self-portrait…. At the doctor’s office, she weeps for the children she will never have, assuaged only by the unshakable love between her and her husband. In such powerful, evocative scenes as this one, The Body Papers comes fully alive. Now a lecturer at Tufts University, Talusan chronicles that fraught passage from one world, one body, to another, marking with sensitivity how an American life can be both burden and benediction.”
—Luis H. Francia, New York Times Book Review
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
“Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers is one of the fiercest and most intimate books I have ever read. It is a memoir of immigration, of multiculturalism, of family betrayals and loving binds, and deeply a memoir of the body: about the documents and silences that regulate it, and the memories and emotions that live inside it. Talusan has written an urgent and necessary testament for our time. Reading it left me raw. Reading it will change you.”
—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder & A Memoir
Barnes & Noble Blog - Jenny Shank
“In this moving, clear-eyed memoir, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, she probes the events of her life, documenting them with photographs and official papers. She involves the reader in her quest to make sense of who she has become by charting where she’s been…. The portrait Talusan creates of her father, Totoy, is one of the most complex and beautiful parts of the book…. Talusan is still working on healing. It’s clear that telling her story with such openness and perceptiveness, is part of that ongoing process.”
—Jenny Shank, Barnes & Noble Blog
Marie Myung-Ok Lee
“In The Body Papers, Grace Talusan takes us to the space between what official documents say and what the body's cells know—the understated prose startles with its beauty, the insights it provides are priceless.”
—Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter
Celeste Ng
“Grace Talusan writes eloquently about the most unsayable things: the deep gravitational pull of family, the complexity of navigating identity as an immigrant, and the ways we move forward even as we carry our traumas with us. Equal parts compassion and confession, The Body Papers is a stunning work by a powerful new writer who—like the best memoirists—transcends the personal to speak on a universal level.”
Christopher Castellani
“There is so much to admire in this brave and fierce and deeply intimate memoir. By taking such an unsentimental and plainspoken approach to her material, Talusan simply demands that the reader pay attention. The Body Papers is told in thematic sequences in which the author and the family come continually to light, in flashes that get brighter as we read, and by the end we see everyone in their full humanity and comprehend the depths of both despair and love at their core. As a child of immigrants, I found much to relate to in the family dynamics—alternately laughing and shuddering with recognition.”
Electric Literature - R. O. Kwon
“Grace Talusan makes use of immigration papers, legal certificates, and medical test results in her memoir about immigration, trauma, and illness. The winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction, The Body Papers is timely and compelling.”
—R. O. Kwon, Electric Literature
Booklist - Terry Hong
“Awarded the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Talusan bravely alchemizes unbearable traumas into a potent memoir remarkably devoid of self-pity, replete with fortitude and grace.”
—Terry Hong, Booklist
Mira Jacob
“This gorgeous, slim memoir is about so many things—being in a body that survives immigration, violence, cancer… this memoir will peel you back sentence after sentence, leaving your nerve endings grateful for the body that wrote it.”
—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk and The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing
The Boston Globe - Nina MacLaughlin
“Grace Talusan’s finely-wrought and eloquent memoir, The Body Papers, was the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. The book is visceral, bodily, and throbs with pain and trauma — sexual abuse by a family member, cancer, the phantom-limb ache of an outsider in a foreign land, and later, as an outsider in the homeland. In less skilled hands, it all might be too much to bear, but Philippines-born Talusan ... brings us along in spare, specific, sense-rich detail, and reveals, along the way, the power to be found in giving a name to the unnamable, in giving language to subjects and experiences that defy it. Therein, Talusan shows, one can find the possibility of healing what’s happened in the past, as well as moving into the future with gratitude, wisdom, and strength.”
—Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
Mia Alvar
“The Body Papers is an extraordinary portrait of the artist as survivor. From a legacy of trauma and secrecy spanning oceans and generations, Grace Talusan has crafted a wise, lucid, and big-hearted stand against silence—a literary lifeline for all who have endured profound pain and hope to be seen and loved through it.”
—Mia Alvar, author of In the Country
From the Publisher
“[A] precise, delicately constructed memoir-in-essays…. The Body Papers doesn’t track a one-way march to triumph from adversity; Talusan’s essays loop in on themselves, as she retrieves old memories and finds unexpected points of connection…. Talusan describes such experiences with unadorned prose that conveys a startling specificity…. Such commentary, while righteous and earned, is not the point of this indelible book. Talusan has the instincts of a storyteller, teasing out her narrative through images and allusion.”
—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers is one of the fiercest and most intimate books I have ever read. It is a memoir of immigration, of multiculturalism, of family betrayals and loving binds, and deeply a memoir of the body: about the documents and silences that regulate it, and the memories and emotions that live inside it. Talusan has written an urgent and necessary testament for our time. Reading it left me raw. Reading it will change you.”
—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder & A Memoir
“Grace Talusan’s finely-wrought and eloquent memoir, The Body Papers, was the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. The book is visceral, bodily, and throbs with pain and trauma — sexual abuse by a family member, cancer, the phantom-limb ache of an outsider in a foreign land, and later, as an outsider in the homeland. In less skilled hands, it all might be too much to bear, but Philippines-born Talusan ... brings us along in spare, specific, sense-rich detail, and reveals, along the way, the power to be found in giving a name to the unnamable, in giving language to subjects and experiences that defy it. Therein, Talusan shows, one can find the possibility of healing what’s happened in the past, as well as moving into the future with gratitude, wisdom, and strength.”
—Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
“But what renders the book memorable — perhaps what earned it the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing — is the author’s unstinting self-portrait…. At the doctor’s office, she weeps for the children she will never have, assuaged only by the unshakable love between her and her husband. In such powerful, evocative scenes as this one, The Body Papers comes fully alive. Now a lecturer at Tufts University, Talusan chronicles that fraught passage from one world, one body, to another, marking with sensitivity how an American life can be both burden and benediction.”
—Luis H. Francia, New York Times Book Review
“Grace Talusan makes use of immigration papers, legal certificates, and medical test results in her memoir about immigration, trauma, and illness. The winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction, The Body Papers is timely and compelling.”
—R. O. Kwon, Electric Literature
“Awarded the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Talusan bravely alchemizes unbearable traumas into a potent memoir remarkably devoid of self-pity, replete with fortitude and grace.”
—Terry Hong, Booklist
“In The Body Papers, Grace Talusan takes us to the space between what official documents say and what the body's cells know—the understated prose startles with its beauty, the insights it provides are priceless.”
—Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody's Daughter
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
"Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers is one of the fiercest and most intimate books I have ever read. It is a memoir of immigration, of multiculturalism, of family betrayals and loving binds, and deeply a memoir of the body: about the documents and silences that regulate it, and the memories and emotions that live inside it. Talusan has written an urgent and necessary testament for our time. Reading it left me raw. Reading it will change you."
Library Journal
04/01/2019
Talusan (English, Tufts Univ.) relates a life of trauma but also faith and family love, which have helped her persevere. In the 1970s, her family moved to the United States from the Philippines. The author recalls key events in her life from that time up to more recent years and does not shy away from unpleasant memories, instead presenting an honest account of her experiences with racial bias, abuse, and health problems. Growing up near Boston, Talusan was the only person of color in her school. She appeared to belong to a loving Catholic family, but for seven years, beginning at age eight, her paternal grandfather secretly molested her whenever he visited the family. Despite counseling, deep depression haunted Talusan for years. As a young woman, she learned she carried a genetic mutation for breast and ovarian cancer and, relinquishing her wish to become a mother, had elective surgery. Talusan's story ends on a positive note, as she writes of a cultural homecoming when she and her husband spent time in the Philippines on a Fulbright Scholarship. VERDICT This transformative memoir will especially appeal to readers who have experienced some of the trials Talusan discusses.—Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Kirkus Reviews
2019-02-04
A Filipino-American writer's debut memoir about how she overcame a personal history fraught with racism, sexual trauma, mental illness, and cancer.
When Talusan (English/Tufts Univ.) and her student-parents moved from Manila to Chicago in the mid-1970s, they never dreamed they would eventually settle in Boston and live a traditional version of the American dream. Her father, Totoy, went on to enjoy a successful medical career, and the family joined the middle class; however, success was both fragile and costly. When Totoy's student visa expired, the family lived for almost a decade in the shadow of possible deportation. In school, teachers mistook Talusan for Chinese and misrepresented her Filipino heritage. Yet the author thrived, both in the classroom and at home. Then a pedophilic paternal grandfather, whom the author later learned had done "monstrous things to three generations of his family," began to live on and off with the family. Sexually abused from ages 7 to 13, the author suffered severe trauma that manifested in mysterious skin ailments and, later, insomnia, night terrors, nightmares, dissociation, and suicidal depression. Despite the learning difficulties her inner turmoil caused, she still managed to graduate from Tufts University. During college, Talusan learned that three maternal aunts had been diagnosed with breast cancer while another had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. When she reached her mid-30s and was considering starting a family of her own with a husband she adored, the author voluntarily chose to have a double mastectomy. Later on, she opted for an oophorectomy that ended her dreams of motherhood. A return to the Philippines followed. Once in Manila, the author began a new quest to recover those lost parts of herself that had haunted her "like the insistent ache of a phantom limb." Moving and eloquent, Talusan's book is a testament not only to one woman's fierce will to live, but also to the healing power of speaking the unspeakable.
A candidly courageous memoir.
