Overview

Sifting the Feminine: Essays on a Woman’s Body examines how we define and understand femininity in relation to how we consider and treat women’s bodies. Through a collection of personal, lyric, and flash essays, Ashley Anderson explores how illness, particularly polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), manifests and affects the relationships between women, their bodies, and the world. In retaliation against a history of scrutiny, Sifting the Feminine upends the idea that our bodies are always within our own control. Meditating on illness, health care, social media, storytelling, clothing, various forms of violence, and popular culture, Sifting the Feminine seeks to understand why women’s bodies that challenge societal and cultural expectations of femininity are routinely disregarded in a world where no two bodies, regardless of gender, exist in the same way.

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9780820367903

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Reviews

Sifting the Feminine strikes exactly the right balance for a work about an embodied experience that will draw readers looking for validation as well as artistry; the artistry is there, but it doesn't need to be appreciated to find the empathy in the writing.--Sarah Einstein ""author of Mot: A Memoir""

Sifting the Feminine strikes exactly the right balance for a work about an embodied experience that will draw readers looking for validation as well as artistry; the artistry is there, but it doesn't need to be appreciated to find the empathy in the writing. -- Sarah Einstein * author of Mot: A Memoir * Sifting the Feminine is for anyone who has looked in the mirror and sucked in her gut. It’s for anyone who has starved herself to fit into a dress, into a mold, into an imagined 'better' version of herself. Anderson’s essays are raw, vulnerable, honest, and fierce. Through her writing, she clears a path with courage so others can follow more easily. -- Julija Šukys * author of Artifact: Encounters with the Campus Shooting Archives *

Author Information

ASHLEY ANDERSON has had essays, short stories, and scholarship appear in Quarter After Eight, Permafrost, Newfound, Tahoma Literary Review, SLAB, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and other publications. Sifting the Feminine: Essays on a Woman’s Body was a semifinalist for the 2022 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. Anderson holds a PhD in English with a creative writing emphasis from the University of Missouri–Columbia. She currently teaches at the University of Missouri and lives in Columbia, where she makes a lot of crafts, drinks a lot of coffee, and listens to a lot of Taylor Swift.

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