Reading My Body is a Book of Rules (Red Hen Press, $16.96) is an experience unlike reading any other memoir that I can think of. The new memoir from Seattle author Elissa Washuta turns the format on its head. She’s unconcerned with (re)telling her life story in any narrative structure, and instead has chapters that annotate her match.com profile, detail a college study of sexual habits, list the books that have influenced her, ruminates on the lives of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain, and recaps her prescription drugs to treat being bipolar. The result is a completely unforgettable book.
Three elements of Washuta’s life are explored in depth in Book of Rules: her Native American identity, her struggles with mental illnesses, and being raped at twenty. The chapter where she lists her sexual partners, in reverse order, culminating with her first time (and her sexual assault). One of the most chilling passages I can recall is when she writes, “When I get back into the bed that used to be for sleep, I play the scene over in my head, as though I could improve upon it in my thoughts. But still, in every remembering, in the middle of the night you are on top of me. Still, every time, I say no, you say yes, and to you, it is nothing but a difference of opinion.”
There are also elements that are quite funny, like when Washuta is showing us her match.com profile, with footnotes. There’s a humorous familiarity that rings when she says in her ad, “I read Cosmopolitan, I also read literary theory” and then the footnote says, “I’ve never read lit theory in my life, but it sounds smart.” Elsewhere in the profile, she write, “During the summer, I sleep outside for a little while every day, when I can” with the footnote, “That has never happened. I might have dozed off while tanning by the pool, but reclining on a vinyl chair above concrete hardly counts as putting in some time in the great outdoors.”
As you read Book of Rules, it feels like you’re learning about Elissa Washuta’s life just as she’s processing it, too. Nothing in the book really feels self-serving or like she’s trying to tell a story that isn’t interesting but necessary for the sake of memoir. She states upfront that “I will say right now that my childhood was as close to perfect as any can possibly be, with thickets and cats and forts and books and loving parents who raised me right and have always told me that I am brilliant and special, but still, my brain was askew, and no day ever felt completely right.”
It feels like you’re learning about Elissa Washuta’s life just as she’s processing it, too. Checking out after fewer than two hundred pages, readers should feel a real connection with Washuta. She’s frank and open with her readers, and she generously lets you into exactly what she’s thinking. If Elissa Washuta wants to rewrite the phone book, I would happily read it.
{Elissa Washuta’s book release party is Thursday, August 14 at the Hugo House at 7:00pm.}
