Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing

<div><b>Winner 2021 Housatonic Book Award<br> Finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction</b><br> <br> <i>You have a history and a body. You are a history and a body. Your body has (is) a history too.</i> As a girl Julie Marie Wade was uninterested in makeup boy-watching and other trappings of conventional girlhood much to her mother's disappointment. Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe-movie stars immortalized as feminine ideals even as they both died tragically and young-were lodestars that threw Wade's own definition of beauty into relief as she stumbled into adulthood.<br> <br> Now in <i>Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing</i> Wade traces the intimate story of coming of age in one particular body (as a lesbian an only child a Protestant attending Catholic school). She uses the language and tenets of music math religion fairy tales poetry and art to reckon with the many facets of embodiment sexuality and love in our contemporary world. The diet industry popular culture and her own family all provide rich material for what is ultimately a lyrical and unflinching investigation into the questions that prickle deep within the human heart.<br>  </div>