This Is My Body (Paperback)

Cameron Dezen Hammon

ISBN 10: 1940596327 / ISBN 13: 9781940596327

Published by Lookout Books, 2019

About this Item

Paperback. Winner of the Nonfiction Discovery Prize from the Writers' League of Texas, a bronze medalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award in Creative Nonfiction, and a finalist for the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year in Autobiography and MemoirIn this memoir of faith and faltering, musician Cameron Dezen Hammon, a Jew-ish New Yorker, finds herself searching for love, meaninga sign. She's led to Coney Island, where during a lightning storm, she is baptized in the murky waters of the Atlantic by a group of ragtag converts. After years of trying to make a name for herself as an artist, she follows her boyfriend and new God to Houston, Texas, the heart of American evangelical subculture. Her job at a suburban megachurch there has her performing on stage before crowds, awash in lights and smoke, yet grappling with outdated gender expectationslook pretty but not too pretty, young but not too youngand ultimately her identity as both a believer and feminist. This Is My Body weaves her zealous conversion with the search for a more progressive and fluid theology, the endurance of marriage with an unexpected obsession that threatens to upend her carefully constructed life. From speaking in tongues to street preaching, from biblically sanctioned discrimination to sexual assault, she invites readers inside her tender and harrowing journey. Part inspiring spiritual memoir, part incisive cultural critique, her story of finding and losing faith is ultimately one of rebuilding a truer, braver self. In this memoir of faith and faltering, musician Hammon, a Jewish New Yorker, offers a tender and harrowing look inside American evangelicalism through the lens of a convert in search of a more progressive and fluid faith. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781940596327

Bibliographic Details

• Title: This Is My Body (Paperback)
• Publisher: Lookout Books
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1940596327
• ISBN 13: 9781940596327
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the Nonfiction Discovery Prize from the Writers’ League of Texas, a bronze medalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award in Creative Nonfiction, and a finalist for the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year in Autobiography and Memoir

In this memoir of faith and faltering, musician Cameron Dezen Hammon, a Jew-ish New Yorker, finds herself searching for love, meaning―a sign. She’s led to Coney Island, where during a lightning storm, she is baptized in the murky waters of the Atlantic by a group of ragtag converts. After years of trying to make a name for herself as an artist, she follows her boyfriend and new God to Houston, Texas, the heart of American evangelical subculture. Her job at a suburban megachurch there has her performing on stage before crowds, awash in lights and smoke, yet grappling with outdated gender expectations―look pretty but not too pretty, young but not too young―and ultimately her identity as both a believer and feminist.

This Is My Body weaves her zealous conversion with the search for a more progressive and fluid theology, the endurance of marriage with an unexpected obsession that threatens to upend her carefully constructed life. From speaking in tongues to street preaching, from biblically sanctioned discrimination to sexual assault, she invites readers inside her tender and harrowing journey. Part inspiring spiritual memoir, part incisive cultural critique, her story of finding and losing faith is ultimately one of rebuilding a truer, braver self.

About the Author

Cameron Dezen Hammon is the author of This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession (Lookout Books), the Nonfiction Discovery Prize Winner for the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards. This Is My Body earned a Bronze Medal in Creative Nonfiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award in Autobiography and Memoir. Cameron’s nonfiction has appeared in The Kiss anthology, Vogue, Guernica, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Seattle Pacific University and has taught creative writing at Rice University, where she is a lecturer, as well as at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Duke Divinity, Writers in the Schools Houston, Inprint Houston, and Hugo House.