Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.93 (796 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1582432090 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
There's not a trace of self-pity as she lists the toxic substances leaked into the air, ground, and water by the chemical company, nuclear power plant, and nuclear missile bunker near her family's summer home in Holly Park, New Jersey. Susanne Antonetta writes with a poet's precision about the almost unspeakable series of ills that have assaulted her body: cysts on her ovaries, a divided uterus, endometriosis, rampant thyroid tumors, a quadruplet pregnancy (no fertility drugs involved) that ended in miscarriage, and manic-depressive illne
"Sad, poignant, and poetic" according to Michael K. McKeon. While "Body Toxic" is an environmental memoir, it is debatable whether the accent should be placed on the term environmental, or on the term toxic. In all probability it should be toxic, because that term is more apropos to the disfunctional maternal side of the family whose emotional problems, while apparently exacerbated by the environmental conditions Antonetta describes, pre. "A Powerful Book in a New Genre" according to Fairbanks Reader - Bonnie Brody. This book reads like poetry. The author tries to understand herself and her history from the outside in, as the collaboration of environment, family and genetics on who she is as a woman.She talks about the toxins in the environment and how her living nearby many of them of them are possible reasons for some serious health and emotional issues she now struggles with. She also ex. "Body Toxic" according to Marianne Johnson. Written in a style both haunting and poetic, this book captured my attention immediately. Susanne Antonetta examines the environmental and political issues of radioactive waste, nuclear reactors and chemically poisoned water supplies, blended with excerpts from her memoirs as a child, growing up in New Jersey in the 1950's when silence and family secrets were sacrosanct.Spending
Two immigrant families drawn together from wildly different parts of the world, Italy on one side and Barbados on the other, pursued their vision of the American dream by building a summer escape in the boglands of New Jersey, where the rural and industrial collide. They picked gooseberries on hot afternoons and spent lazy days rowing dinghies down creeks. One by one, family members found their bodies mirroring the compromised landscape of the Barrens: infertile and damaged by inexplicable growths. But the gooseberry patch was near a nuclear power plant that released record levels of radiation, and the creeks were invisibly ruined by illegally dumped toxic waste. Soon the area parents were being asked to donate their children's baby teeth to be tested for radiation.