The Body

and why I write about it using words like anus

Before we get started, here is an essay that I wrote for Lit Hub about motherhood: https://lithub.com/the-impossibility-of-writing-about-motherhood/

Now let’s get into it!

It’s already been noted in a few of my Goodreads reviews that I use the word “anus” in my book. They’re referring to this sentence:

Izabel took Cami to the bathroom where Cami peed and brushed her teeth, and Izabel put a little diaper cream around her anus that never stopped being red. (pp158-159)

It must leave a lasting impression, being the only appearance in a 300+ page book. And I tried not to make it a surprise! In the very first chapter, there are multiple mentions of using toilets and wiping one’s self. (Though I think these moments were also a part of the problem for these readers.)

My novels spend time on moments that other novels don’t. It’s important to me to give space, time, words, and clout to moments other people dismiss as not-literary. Not that I need bathroom scenes in all of my books, but it’s weird to read book after book after book that pretends that we don’t spend time in the bathroom. I need a happy medium.

But that isn’t why I write about the body like I do. I’m not trying to make the body literary. The body is already literary. I am, instead, trying to normalize the body. To de-sensationalize it.