The book was a no.
1 best-seller in Gleesons native Ireland last year, and scored universal acclaim from the UK press.
Read our conversation below.
Credit: Bríd O’Donovan; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Why do you think we take our bodies for granted, and what do we lose in doing so?
SINEAD GLEESON:Bodies are miraculous things.
Theyre these receptacles that carry us around.
Most of the time, most of us are untroubled by them.
How have you kept that mindset?
The simplest answer is that Ive kept it because Im still alive.
I said to the doctors, Am I going to die?
I may not have written a book like this if I didnt have those experiences.
Maybe I wouldnt have been a writer.
So, if anything something already positive has come from it.
I get to hear from people all the time and often its very emotional.
I like work like that.
Some of them ask me, Were you not afraid?
Youre really putting yourself out there.
What was the intention behind this?
I have quite a bit of metal and pins and plates in my body because of surgeries Ive had.
Im a disaster in the airport.
I get the extra double scan because I beep.
I think of all the metal in my body, glistening like stars.
But it all comes back to the shape of the book.
So, I convinced myself that I was just writing one off bits and pieces.
Maybe the piece about haunting grandmothers doesnt relate to the piece about the church, or whatever.
Then you yourself write about blood and a whole poetry section using words from the McGill Pain Index.
What do you think is the importance of doing this?
I always feel like none of the words are adequate.
Pain is like a fingerprint: its so distinct.
So, one way [of reclaiming agency] is talking about it so its no longer taboo.
Why isnt that the heroic stuff?
My book is not a book in isolation.
In Ireland, you didnt talk about your body or your female-ness.
We were told to be quiet by politics and the church, but nobody is quiet anymore.
People are standing up and speaking up.
Agency is using your voice and talking about the taboos.
What kind of effect does this have for someone who has battled cancer?
My hair would often need to be chopped off to try and get it back to its normal color.
The day I shaved it off I was in the hospital and asked for clippers.
Because your hair falls off very slowly from chemo, it gets in your eyes and is very irritating.
I just remember this gorgeous little nurse called Gita.
She used to take my blood all the time when my veins wouldnt work.
So, I realize for a lot of women why it could be traumatic.
But it just felt like another part of my body.
What are your thoughts on that?
Generally, I feel like my guts very in tune.
Theres something very primal about it.
The body is not just flesh and bones, nor a product just to be studied by science.
Theres something else going on.
But Im open to possibility because none of us knows what happens.
Life is about multiplicities.
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