On Bodies by 3 of Cups Press

On Bodies Reviews

• 
  Robert Shepherd

  I’ve just finished reading this and it's very good, but it’s also kind of sad because all the bodies who wrote it seem to hate being bodies at all.
  
  I can understand that, because I hate being a body even when I am cis, male and relatively free of ongoing conditions, but it turns out there are all sorts of horrible things about being a human body that I didn’t even know about! Stephanie Boland’s essay on the ovary pain she’s in lots of the time made me want to personally apologise for not having any ovaries myself. Michael Amherst’s story of living with Epstein-Barr Virus is an insight into what it’s like to have a condition I barely knew about. And there are stories from people who society has decided are too hairy or have breasts that are too large; who are deemed too masculine; too feminine; too not the sort of body that people expect. It’s all horrible, and exhausting. Bodies feel like an awful idea.
  
  Although most of the essays in this book are about feeling too aware of the fact that you are a body, the one I related to most was Ari Potter’s, which is about feeling totally disconnected from it. Staring blankly at your skin and thinking about how fragile it is; deciding literally *being* a big sack of bones is ridiculous and refusing to accept it. There’s this awful paradox throughout this whole book where being seen as only a body denies a person of any humanity, but being seen as something apart from their body denies them of the compassion they deserve. Where the body is something you want to escape, but is also something you are. It made me feel it was important to be kinder to people in general: more considerate, better. Because being a person means you also have to be a body, and being a body is really very hard.
• 
  Lizzie Huxley-Jones

  For all transparency’s sake, I am one of the editors of this collection, but as I didn’t write any of it I feel especially duty bound to tell you how excellent On Bodies is. A wealth of talented individuals in one book, reflecting on Bodies in all their varieties, ranging from new voices to watch like Livia Franchini, Clouds Haberberg and Krish Jeyakumar, to established writers including Michael Amherst, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Rachel Heng. I’m so proud of all the work in this beautiful second book.
• 
  Nathaniel

  Have been meaning to read this for a long time.
  An overall strong collection of writing, with some pieces that really stood out for me. (Don't have my copy at hand but the one about sleep, the one about playing guitar and the penultimate one come to mind first.) Like all anthologies it is a mixed bag, I enjoyed most of it. Some pieces I understood but struggled to sink into the writing. The majority came across clearly in their message and that in itself is a big feat. Looking forward to 'On Anxiety' and 'On Relationships'!
• 
  Roxani

  An excerpt I appreciated from Alice Tarbuck's essay about experiencing nature through the lens of chronic illness: "There is magic in allowing the natural world to show itself to you, without having to ‘conquer’ it. There is magic to de-centering walking as an experience, and getting rid of snobbishness about ‘wilderness’ and the unique glory of hard-to-reach spots on cliffs and peaks."