Melissa Febos’s Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative reveals the pleasures and pain of life writing, emphasising writing personally as an embodied, subversive practice. Contrary to the idea of personal narrative as frivolous “navel-gazing,” Febos explicitly identifies personal narrative as a site of courage and bravery. She observes: “Navel-gazing is not for the faint of heart. The risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery.” 

Like Febos’s earlier works—Whip Smart (2010), Abandon Me: Memoirs (2017), and Girlhood (2021)—Body Work explores the role of sex in narrative. In a series of interconnected essays on crafting narratives, the ethics of writing personally, and the continued necessity of personal writings, Febos deftly weaves in commentary on public disdain for trauma narratives and the potential for community through personal stories. This, she writes, is the body work: “Almost everything I’ve ever written started with a secret, with the fear that my subject was unspeakable.” This is particularly true in the case of trauma narratives; Febos emphasises that the cost of speaking out is, for many, devastatingly high. However, she also reminds us that, “It is not gauche to write about trauma.” In fact, “By convincing us to police our own and one another’s stories, they [oppressive powers] have enlisted us in the project of our own continued disempowerment.” Working against this disempowerment, very simply, means writing.

Chapter 2, “Mind Fuck,” wholeheartedly refutes the policing of personal stories, instead imploring the “unrule: you can use any words you want.” Though Febos is discussing the mechanics of writing sex, her “unrule” for writing intimately is threaded throughout the whole book. It is the heart of Febos’s narrative project, where she blends a masterclass in craft with an understanding of why personal narratives continue to be so important for both the author and the reader. 

In each section, her prose is striking, both poetic and succinct, tender yet determined. She acknowledges the tension between the author and their subjects: that “[i]t is profoundly unfair that a writer gets to author the public version of a story that has as many true variations as people involved.” Writing personally inevitably divulges intimate details and begs the question of which stories we can truly call ours—here, Febos advises humility, “using common sense and one’s own particular moral compass” when writing about others. 

Ultimately, though, Body Work shows that writing personally should engage our whole selves, for better or for worse. Sometimes it is difficult, sometimes it is painful, and sometimes it is joyous. Febos’s commitment to exploring these exciting, uncomfortable, and inarguably necessary truths is precisely what makes Body Work so instructive and compelling.