In this Book
- Autobiography of a Sea Creature: Healing the Trauma of Infant Surgery
- Book
- 2023
- Published by: University of California Health Humanities Press
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
summary
Operated on as an infant, without anesthesia, Wendy P. Williams began life at war with her body. There were tubes everywhere, in and out of every opening, her mother reminded her on every anniversary of her surgery. Autobiography of a Sea Creature takes readers on Williams’ difficult sensory journey toward healing, as she communes along the way with horseshoe crabs, dolphins, and other marine life that taught her the restorative power of beauty, resilience, and interdependence. At times luscious and lyrical, at other times analytical and reflective, this literary memoir portrays the dissociative experience of trauma and the roots of self-destructive cycles, as well as the tragic results of medical beliefs at the time that infants could not feel pain. Autobiography of a Sea Creature is both a love letter to the earth and a hopeful testament of humans' capacity to heal our deepest wounds.
Table of Contents

- Front Matter
- pp. i-vi
- Table of Contents
- pp. vii-viii
- Horseshoe Crabs
- pp. 1-21
- First Waters
- pp. 22-39
- The Intertidal Zone
- pp. 40-54
- Seining for Truth 1978-1982
- pp. 90-101
- Divine Imperfection
- pp. 102-124
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 155-157
- References
- pp. 158-159
Additional Information
ISBN
9781735542355
MARC Record
OCLC
1453283855
Pages
178
Launched on MUSE
2024-08-29
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND
Copyright
2023