The Day My Brain Exploded: A True Story - Softcover

Rajamani, Ashok

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565129970 ISBN 13: 9781565129979

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2013

Synopsis

After a full-throttle brain bleed at the age of twenty-five, Ashok Rajamani, a first-generation Indian American, had to relearn everything: how to eat, how to walk and to speak, even things as basic as his sexual orientation. With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother’s wedding!), as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process, he introduces readers to his family—his principal support group, as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, coruscating, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the reader into unfamiliar territory, much like the experience Alice had when she fell down the rabbit hole. That he lived to tell the story is miraculous; that he tells it with such aplomb is simply remarkable.

More than a decade later he has finally reestablished a productive artistic life for himself, still dealing with the effects of his injury—life-long half-blindness and epilepsy— but forging ahead as a survivor dedicated to helping others who have suffered a similar catastrophe.

About this title

About the Author

Ashok Rajamani is an author, poet, essayist, artist, and former radio host in New York City. His work has been published in dozens of outlets, including Danse Macabre, 3:AM Magazine, Scholars & Rogues, and South Asian Review. The critically acclaimed "The Day My Brain Exploded" is one of the first memoirs of its kind by any Indian-American author in history.

ashokrajamani.com

Reviews

More commonly known as strokes, cerebrovascular accidents—or CVAs—are an all-too-frequent occurrence among our nation’s elderly population. About 87 percent of these are ischemic strokes resulting from sudden blood clots in the brain, whereas the other 13 percent are classified as hemorrhagic. This latter type of CVA, where either a blood vessel or arteriovenous malformation (AVM) unexpectedly ruptures, can occur at any age, as former New York public-relations executive Rajamani horrifyingly discovered when he was only 25. In this frank and witty account of his own brain “explosion,” Rajamani describes in vivid detail the circumstances leading to the injury, and its devastating aftermath on both his family and himself, including chronic epilepsy and a freak form of blindness affecting the left side of each eye. With disarming drollery, the author also recounts his racism-tainted upbringing as an Indian American in white-dominated suburban Chicago. Shedding much-needed light on a little-known medical trauma, Rajamani’s sharp-edged prose is both informative and inspiring, especially for the many marginalized sufferers of brain injury and those close to them. --Carl Hays

Edition details

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565129970
• ISBN 13: 9781565129979
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 270