As the Affordable Care Act inches towards repealment and Planned Parenthood faces federal defunding, many Americans feel their health is threatened. Activists attempt to raise awareness about these issues of health and human rights, particularly as they pertain to marginalized groups. A new anthology called Uprooted aims to facilitate discussion around the intersection of illness and gender through a collection of poetry, prose, essays, and visual art. Curated by four Berkeley High School alumni and former Jacket editors, the anthology presents a socially conscious examination of the unique personal and political weight that illness carries in our society.
Megan Winkelman, Liat Litwin, Megan Collins, and Hayley Beckett started Uprooted in 2014 as a response to a lack of conversation around illness. Each having experienced different life-shaping events involving gender and illness, the editors began to search for others’ stories and found they weren’t hearing them. “We were searching for the vocabulary and public space to have those discussions,” Winkelman said. Following a call for submissions in June, 2014, the editors received 150 different pieces, which they whittled down to just 27.
The final selection of works discusses a range of topics including pain, discrimination, identity, family, loss, and reconciliation. In the anthology, a daughter journeys to visit her dying mother, a woman discusses her transsexual identity, and a high achieving professional chronicles her struggle with bulimia.
Beyond talking about illness, Uprooted delves into the framework of the conversation itself. For example, author Anna Eilertson critiques the terminology used to discuss breast cancer. Why, she inquired, must people with breast cancer always be “fighters” engaging in “battle” with their bodies? If they don’t make it, does that make them losers?
Amy Berkowitz, who lives with a mysterious disease called fibromyalgia, is unsatisfied with the simple naming of the thing, because diagnosis provided false closure to her case without truly addressing her symptoms. With this emphasis on metacognition, Uprooted presents a lesson in how to have an unconventional conversation about an often uncomfortable topic.
In it, the editors honor heavy personal experiences and contrasting perspectives. “To us, the point of making a book isn’t to create a singular, authoritative text. Instead, we wanted the book to situate different ideas and experiences in a dynamic conversation with each other and with readers,” said Winkelman.
The women hope that the anthology becomes a living document, a text that facilitates back and forth between different authors and sparks real life dialogue among readers.
To this end, Uprooted includes discussion questions and writing prompts, and has already been used by book groups and health professionals.
Winkelman explained, “With support of our discussion questions and writing prompts, these groups are using the book to access new perspectives or the voices of people a reader might not otherwise encounter. There are some subjects we might not naturally know how to talk about, which become more accessible by first reading or writing.”
Neither authors nor editors are turning a profit from Uprooted. Revenue contributes to the cost of production, and any extra dollars fund discounts to increase the book’s accessibility.
“Our goal is that cost should not be an inhibiting factor, that anyone who wants to read this book can get ahold of it, and that the book makes its way into classrooms and medical institutions,” Collins said.
The anthology can also be a vehicle for introspection and self care. According to Collins, stigma around a person’s illness and/or identity can breed silence and isolation.
“The writers in this book offer guidance to navigate the bumps in the road as well as the truly dark periods,” Collins said. “They share their stories in their own words.”
Writer Jennifer MacBain-Stephens said she is happy to have contributed to Uprooted and values the topics she pondered in the process. “I thought the anthology was really brave in that it’s addressing issues that a lot of people don’t want to talk about,” she said.
Readers have offered similarly positive responses. According to Collins, some expressed personal connections to the stories and narrative style. However, one response the editors didn’t anticipate was that many found the book difficult to read for its intimate content. To a extent, it is these challenging experiences that define the conversation the anthology’s editors hope to promote.
“I think the use of personal experiences is one of the most powerful ways to enact change and inspire discussion,” Litwin said. “I think we are in the very early stages of starting conversation.”