Sex with a Brain Injury

Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery
by Annie Liontas

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Pub Date: January 2024
Length: 304 pages

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For readers of Meghan ORourkes The Invisible Kingdom, Esme Weijun Wangs The Collected Schizophrenias, and Melissa Feboss Girlhood, a powerful and deeply personal memoir in essays that sheds light on the silent epidemic of head trauma.

Annie Liontas suffered multiple concussions in her thirties. In Sex with a Brain Injury, she writes about what it means to be one of the walking wounded, facing her fear, her rage, her physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on her marriage and other relationships. Forced to reckon with her own queer mothers battle with addiction, Liontas finds echoes in their pain. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disabilityparticularly in relation to women and the LGBT community. She uncovers the surprising legacy of brain injury, examining its role in culture, the criminal justice system, and through historical figures like Henry VIII and Harriet Tubman. The hidden gift of injury, Liontas writes, is the ability to connect with others. For the millions of people who have suffered from head trauma, and for those who love them, this astonishing and compassionate narrative offers insight and hope in equal measure.

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Review:

"An intimate memoir of a profound affliction and resilience offers frank reflections on the physical, emotional, and cognitive consequences of her injuriesstands as testimony to love and patience." --Kirkus

"These unflinching and eye-opening essays wow at every turn." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"A riveting book about embodiment, pain, identity, and intimacy. Rings with the honesty, humor, and intelligence of all my favorite books and is among the best examples of ethical personal writing that I've ever encountered. This book is a stunning achievement." --Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood

"This is an infuriatingly gorgeous, important book and Liontas is a singular writer." --Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

"Annie Liontas writes like an alchemist, braiding humor, humanity, and history into the personal narrative of her injuries and healing. I loved this book." --Melissa Broder, author of Death Valley

"A gorgeous, passionate book about the ways we fight to find intimacy across the different realities of our bodies and brains and lives. What a difficult miracle this is to pull off! And yetbecause her experience and understanding of brain injury and the larger historical and cultural scope of it, too. How lucky we are for this gripping, moving, and necessary memoir." --CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife

"Im in awe of Annie Liontass Sex with a Brain Injury for a hundred reasons, not the least of which is its resistance to abstract language, which is another way to say its commitment to writing through the immediacy of sinew, nerve, blood, and bone. On top of that it's funny, tender, hopeful, and disarmingly intimate with a charisma." --Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World

"A sensational read. A guidebook to falling back in love with the unruly body. Liontas renders the intimacy their own story and those of others who live with invisible suffering. This book is a revelation, a cold compress on anything that achesthe mind, certainly, but also the heart and soul." --Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches

"An unforgettable read. Sex with a Brain Injury succeeds in extraordinary, unfamiliar ways. Memories are rendered like snapshotsvivid, sharply and wonderfully strange, they form a tapestry of questions: what does true intimacy look like? What are the margins of illness, and how, too, is illness spacious, illuminating? Liontas brilliantly articulates." --T Kira Mahealani Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

"A most extraordinary lesson in compassion... Annie Liontas has captured the truths known mostly to survivors of brain injury. Hers is a visceral, bracing account and the war she fought to make meaning of suffering and reclaim her life. A celebration of the complexities of vulnerability, this book is required reading for everyone with a brain, injured or otherwise. A triumph." --Dr. Kim Gorgens, neuropsychologist & TED Speaker