About the Book
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)
About the Author :
Shahd Alshammari has Multiple Sclerosis and is a Kuwaiti-Palestinian author and academic. After gaining her PhD in the UK, she became an Assistant Professor of Literature in Kuwait. Her research interests focus on women with mental illness in literature. Alshammari is especially interested in the concept of hybridity, having been born to a Bedouin father and a Palestinian mother. She is also interested in Disability Studies and the correlation of disability studies with identity in the Arab world, having been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 18.
Review :
“Head Above Water... reflects on what it's like to live with a disability, to experience pain on an almost daily basis but fail to translate it to others, not for lack trying but if you don't live the experience, you will never fully understand it. Whether you have MS, or any other type of disability or chronic pain I think for many this book will strike a chord with you.” —Raya Aljadir, Disability Activist and writer @accessless
“The core of this book lies in its intimate questioning of loneliness and disability. The soul is held captive by the body, but the body is also the finding place, the freeing place. 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. It is a brave book.” —Jokha Alharthi Omani author of Celestial Bodies, winner of the International Man Booker Prize, 2019
“Shahd Alshammari’s Head above Water is a welcome addition to the growing body of illness narratives. She conveys eloquently and candidly the randomness of her multiple sclerosis, communicating what it’s like to live in her body—Arab, female, disabled—and how her illness has shaped her education and her life as an academic. Her prose is at once lively and deadly serious, vividly somatic and deeply thoughtful, highly engaging. Her book succeeds at a difficult endeavor: narrating chronic illness without imposing a false narrative arc on that experience.” —G.T. Couser, author of Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing
“Shahd Alshammari's memoir of life with MS is one of the first distinctly 21st century illness narratives. She situates chronic illness at the intersection of issues that include gender, exile, medical experimentation, and the politics of the Middle East. Her memoir becomes truly a dialogue, as her story fills with the voices of other women and men she has known, and how illness disrupted their lives. Reading her, 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
“Dr Shahd Alshammari's Head Above Water is...beautifully written in an approachable tone. The book offers numerous anecdotes filled with trials and tribulations, historical narratives and childhood dreams, and above all human moments that remind us that wherever we lie on the spectrum of being fully able-bodied human beings or significantly disabled we all share similar fears and more importantly hopes." —Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, writer and lecturer, founder of Barjeel Art Foundation
“Shahd Al Shammari closes her eyes, gets closer to herself, and produces a breakthrough narrative on dealing with a chronic illness. Conversational in tone, yet candid and probing in nature, Head above Water fills a gap in disability narratives by Arab Women. At once, a sad story, on loss, death and the inability to cry; but also a story full of hope, love and appreciation for life and for friendship. Shahd defies death. The result is a sanguine memoir, more, on ability rather than disability, on wellness rather than illness.” —Dr. Nawar Al-Hassan Golley, author of Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies
"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, Arab Lit
“At once reflective and poetic, Alshammari’s writing style is peppered with thought-provoking metaphors that chronicle both her personal experiences with trauma and society’s overall ignorance, and inclination towards denial, when it comes to illness. Elements of faith and feminism are also brilliantly woven into her story" —Hafsa Lodi, Author of Modesty: A Fashion Paradox and freelance journalist.
“Engaging and beautiful, this memoir resonates so much, from the writer not being ‘allowed’ to be ill as a child to her realising illness is random and shocking, and the feelings of failure and humiliation that can follow. The writer is an Arab woman of a different generation to me and yet I identified with so much – her fear of ageing faster than her peers, her feelings of voicelessness, the struggle with her sense of identity, and her attempts to fit into (and fight against) society’s expectations. This is a rich, lyrical, honest account of living with a chronic, painful condition which deals with pain and loss, and yet is a joy to read.” —Catherine Simpson, author of One Body (Saraband), When I Had a Little Sister (4th Estate), and True Story (Sandstone Press).
An intimate and layered portrait of disabled womanhood.
