The Camera My Mother Gave Me

“When eros goes away,” she writes, “it’s as if I’m colorblind. The title comes from Luis Buñuel’s film Viridiana. The world is gray.” But is this a problem of body, or mind? And can clinicians tease out the difference between the two?Spare, frank, and altogether original, The Camera My Mother Gave Me challenges us to think in new ways about the centrality and power of sexuality. They ask a maid to take a group snapshot, and she obliges, lifting up her skirt and using the “camera” that’s underneath.Kaysen’s The Camera My Mother Gave Me observes what happens when sexual pleasure is replaced by pain. It is an extraordinary investigation into the role sex plays in perception and our notions of ourselves—and into what happens when the erotic impulse meets the world of medicine. Some peasants are at a banquet in a country mansion. The Camera My Mother Gave Me takes us through Susanna Kaysen’s often comic, sometimes surreal encounters with all kinds of doctors—internists, gynecologists, “alternative health” experts—as well as with her boyfriend and her friends, when suddenly, ine

I feel a little less alone after reading I've had vulvodynia for 11 years, 7 of which went undiagnosed due to uneducated practitioners. I'm 31. I can't believe I didn't know about this book. Although my experience was very different from Kaysen's, I cried almost the whole way through. She so perfectly captures the emotions of going through this horrible, under researched condition. I feel like I've commiserated with a friend, whereas I've never told friends and family what I've gone through. I only wish she would write a follow up. I need to know . Chancie said Flat and detached, too simple. It reads like the very first draft. I enjoyed it, and there were a couple sparks of emotion for me, but the rest of it fell very flat. I wanted more depth, more emotion, more thought and reflection. Majority of the book is her arguing with doctors, talking to doctors, trying whatever they tell her, and arguing with her boyfriend after, and there is very little story in that. By the end of the book, very little had changed since the beginning, and the narrator hadn't changed much, and I was left wondering wh. Informative but restrained Zof The book is a stepping stone to understanding the problem. I believe it is one point of view but there are many other better books to help a woman with vulvodynia. I also didn't like how abruptly the author ended. I also think resources should have been listed. Not what I had expected.

This isn't a book you'll want to pull out on a crowded train, with clinical terms like clitoris and vulvologist, not to mention earthier ones like the F word, on virtually every page to attract the startled attention of the passenger in the next seat. --Wendy Smith. Nonetheless, the pared-down candor that made her portrait of mental illness so gripping in Girl, Interrupted also distinguishes this account of a decidedly physical affliction. Bluntly describing her yearlong effort to deal with a searing pain in her vagina, Susanna Kaysen doesn't stint on the details of what this malady did to her relationship with her boyfriend (nothing good), nor is she forgiving of the callousness and stupidity displayed by some of her doctors and various alternative health p