Tender Points

Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Disability Studies. TENDER POINTS is a narrative fractured by trauma. Named after the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, the book-length lyric essay explores sexual violence, gendered illness, chronic pain, and patriarchy through the lenses of lived experience and pop culture (Twin Peaks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, noise music, etc.). TENDER POINTS does precisely what people are always saying can't be done it combines a moving, distilled, literary journey with advocacy and even pedagogy, here about trauma, chronic pain, patriarchy, and more. Call it ecriture feminine en homme, if you want (as Berkowitz does, with acid wit) but whatever you call it, this is firm, high- stakes speech speaking truth to power, radiating beauty and fierceness from its inspiring insistence and persistence. Maggie Nelson 'Trauma is nonlinear, ' writes Berkowitz. I am impressed by the sensing form she makes. That has the day in it, as well as the night. The body, that is, in variable settings, frames and weathers. The stairs that 'climb up my arms and neck.' The 'I am bitterly jealous of people who can always go back to being a barista for a while.' This book is a kind of clutching and being there for real, and that is what I like. A book. That takes up. A visceral form. Bhanu Kapil TENDER POINTS is one of those books that feels necessary. It takes on rape culture and cops and doctors, the whole long history of who gets to speak and how, who gets heard and who doesn't and why not. I wish this book wasn't as necessary as it is, but I'm so grateful to Amy for writing it. Stephanie Young. …