Places I've taken my body

"In sixteen . . . essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body--in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of--indeed, in response to-physical constraints, Brown leadsa peripatetic life: the essays comprise a . . . travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy. Moving between theselocales and others, Brown constellates the subjects that define her inside and out: a disabled and conspicuous body, a religious conversion, a missing twin, a life in poetry. Asshe does, she depicts vividly for us not only her own life but a striking array of sites and topics, among them Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the world's oldest anatomical theater, the American Eugenics movement, and Jerry Falwell's Liberty University"--Provided by publisher.