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This lyrical hybrid memoir revisits a lifetime''s worth of personal journals to slowly piece together a narrative of chronic illness—a moving account of survival, memory, loss, and hope.
Shahd Alshammari is just eighteen when she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and told by her neurologist that she would not make it past age thirty. Despite what she is told, by thirty, she has become a professor of literature, and has managed to navigate education systems in both Kuwait and the United Kingdom and inspire generations of students.
Head above Water is the painstaking, philosophical memoir of Shahd Alshammari''s life of triumph and resistance, as the daughter of a Palestinian mother and Bedouin father, as a woman marked "ill" by society, and as a lifelong reader, student, and teacher. Charting her journey with raw honesty, Shahd explores disability, displacement, and belonging—not only of the body, but of culture, gender, and race, and imparts wisdom of profound philosophical value throughout. It is people, human connections, that keep us afloat, she argues—"and in storytelling we have the power to gain a sense of agency over our lives."
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Head Above Water is a professor's moving account of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at just eighteen in a conservative Kuwaiti society, drawing from her diary entries and fading memories as the disease advances.
“Shahd Alshammari’s sensuous prose explores the manipulation of memory, the question of time, and gender politics. We are invited to reconsider the intricacies of love, the body, motherhood, the pervasive power of language, the power of women’s education, and the synergy between the Professor and the student.”—Jokha Alharthi Omani author of Celestial bodies, winner of the International Man Booker Prize (2019)
“Reading Alshammari’s work, I thought continually of Yeats’s famous line, “a terrible beauty is born.” In this book, illness is that terrible beauty, always affecting but never determining the author’s life.”—Arthur W. Frank, Ph.D. Author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller
“An important piece of life writing - Shahd Alshammari’s memoir breaks new ground in representing the lives of disabled Arab women. Exploring connections between the body, language, and culture, Alshammari’s new memoir is a sensitive and moving invitation to reconsider the stories that we are made of.” —Dr. Roxanne Douglas, University of Warwick
“A necessary and beautiful account of life with a sometimes-invisible and unpredictable disability, complicated by both patriarchy and racism, as well as a professor’s love letter to the act of teaching and being taught.”—Marcia Lynx Qualey (@Arablit)
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Head Above Water is a professor's moving account of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at just eighteen in a conservative Kuwaiti society, drawing from her diary entries and fading memories as the disease advances.
“Shahd Alshammari’s sensuous prose explores the manipulation of memory, the question of time, and gender politics. We are invited to reconsider the intricacies of love, the body, motherhood, the pervasive power of language, the power of women’s education, and the synergy between the Professor and the student.”—Jokha Alharthi Omani author of Celestial bodies, winner of the International Man Booker Prize (2019)
“Reading Alshammari’s work, I thought continually of Yeats’s famous line, “a terrible beauty is born.” In this book, illness is that terrible beauty, always affecting but never determining the author’s life.”—Arthur W. Frank, Ph.D. Author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller
“An important piece of life writing - Shahd Alshammari’s memoir breaks new ground in representing the lives of disabled Arab women. Exploring connections between the body, language, and culture, Alshammari’s new memoir is a sensitive and moving invitation to reconsider the stories that we are made of.” —Dr. Roxanne Douglas, University of Warwick
“A necessary and beautiful account of life with a sometimes-invisible and unpredictable disability, complicated by both patriarchy and racism, as well as a professor’s love letter to the act of teaching and being taught.”—Marcia Lynx Qualey (@Arablit)