'My body dictates who I am. I work the way I do because of my body, I vote the way I do because of my body and I live the way I do because of my body. It is not my body that is at fault, but society’s failure to deal with bodies like mine. I might be in pain, but I am whole. I refuse to have the difficult parts cropped out.
'Kylie Maslen has been living with invisible illness for twenty years—more than half her life. Its impact is felt in every aspect of her day-to-day existence: from work to dating; from her fears for what the future holds to her difficulty getting out of bed some mornings.
'Through pop music, art, literature, TV, film and online culture, Maslen explores the lived experience of invisible illness with sensitivity and wit, drawing back the veil on a reality many struggle—or refuse—to recognise. Show Me Where it Hurts is a powerful collection of essays that speak to those who have encountered the brush-off from doctors, faced endless tests and treatments, and endured chronic pain and suffering. But it is also a bridge reaching out to partners, families, friends, colleagues, doctors: all those who want to better understand what life looks like when you cannot simply show others where it hurts.' (Publication summary)
'One of the supreme, and indeed painful, ironies of pain is that it is so very hard to communicate, yet it always demands to be given voice. Not only as involuntary cry or anguished moan, but in visceral metaphor, as ‘knife’ or ‘burning’, or in memoir or narrative accounts that seek to ‘flesh out’ this terribly isolating state of being. These attempts at giving language to pain seem to invariably fall short. We may listen to, or read, accounts of pain and feel pained ourselves, but this feeling is mostly the sorrow of realising the other person and their suffering is unreachable, and that the pain cannot be taken away.' (Introduction)
'Contemporary writers are demystifying the experience of illness, demanding health care be approached as a community issue rather than an individual battle.'
'Kylie Maslen’s 'Show Me Where it Hurts' is a provoking and much-needed contribution to the conversation about invisible illness.'
Kate Crowcroft on Kylie Maslen's 'Show Me Where It Hurts'
Kate Crowcroft
(presenter),
2020
23439796
2020
single work
podcast
'Kylie Maslen's début essay collection, Show Me Where It Hurts, is an intimate exploration of living with chronic illness. Maslen describes her own experiences with the invisible illness she has lived with for the last twenty years, delving into its daily reality while incorporating music, literature, television, film, online culture, and more. Kate Crowcroft, who reviews the book in ABR's November issue, describes it as 'essential reading for those of us with the privilege of having a body that behaves itself'.' (Production summary)
'Drawing on personal experience and pop culture, Show Me Where It Hurts explores the isolation and frustration of living with chronic pain and mental illness, not to mention battling a medical system steeped in misogyny. “Pain – both physical and mental – is more than a number or shaded area on a chart,” writes Kylie Maslen. Her carefully researched essays demand the reader to see her as a whole person, one whose life is both similar to and different from theirs. She dates, enjoys swimming in the ocean, and has spent countless hours in waiting rooms, in hospital and resting at home.' (Introduction)
'Virginia Woolf wrote that when trying to communicate about pain as a sick woman ‘language at once runs dry’. How does one talk about wounds without fetishising their workings, and how in a society where pain is taboo does one speak of it authentically? In Show Me Where it Hurts, writer and journalist Kylie Maslen balances the difficulty of this equation: telling the story of her disability and having that story remain fundamentally unspeakable. The act of telling remains for Maslen ‘a rejection of language’, and yet the thing on the table for those suffering is ‘the desire to make ourselves known’.' (Introduction)
'Statistically, half of your friends live with some kind of chronic condition, so when we look to art and pop-culture, why aren’t anomalous bodies depicted in their everydayness? Why aren’t there more common sense discussions about the ableist society in which we live? Show Me Where It Hurts: Living with Invisible Illness is a tactile reaction to these questions.' (Introduction)
'One of the supreme, and indeed painful, ironies of pain is that it is so very hard to communicate, yet it always demands to be given voice. Not only as involuntary cry or anguished moan, but in visceral metaphor, as ‘knife’ or ‘burning’, or in memoir or narrative accounts that seek to ‘flesh out’ this terribly isolating state of being. These attempts at giving language to pain seem to invariably fall short. We may listen to, or read, accounts of pain and feel pained ourselves, but this feeling is mostly the sorrow of realising the other person and their suffering is unreachable, and that the pain cannot be taken away.' (Introduction)
'After a year of COVID-reshuffled publication dates, two Adelaide authors – Katerina Bryant and Adelaide Review writer Kylie Maslen – find themselves in the unusual position of both having debut books, which share their lived experiences with chronic illness, hitting shelves in September.' (Introduction)
'Contemporary writers are demystifying the experience of illness, demanding health care be approached as a community issue rather than an individual battle.'
Kate Crowcroft on Kylie Maslen's 'Show Me Where It Hurts'
Kate Crowcroft
(presenter),
2020
23439796
2020
single work
podcast
'Kylie Maslen's début essay collection, Show Me Where It Hurts, is an intimate exploration of living with chronic illness. Maslen describes her own experiences with the invisible illness she has lived with for the last twenty years, delving into its daily reality while incorporating music, literature, television, film, online culture, and more. Kate Crowcroft, who reviews the book in ABR's November issue, describes it as 'essential reading for those of us with the privilege of having a body that behaves itself'.' (Production summary)
