Review: Lessons in Taxidermy by Bee Lavender
Although Bee Lavender and I are just about the same age, at thirteen I was preoccupied with which member of Duran Duran to crush on. When Lavender was thirteen, she was having hundreds of skin cysts systematically dug out and burned off her body. Inflicted with a rare cancer called Gorlin’s Syndrome, the removal stretched out over four years and left her body scarred: “After the first hundred tumors were removed, the doctor said I was mutilated, not fit to be seen by other children.” The Gorlin’s Syndrome was diagnosed after Lavender had a cancerous growth removed from her thyroid gland, and lost part of her jaw to another, unrelated cancer. Using the framework of a current health problem, Bee Lavender recounts her life of illness in her memoir Lessons in Taxidermy Punk Planet Books / Akashic Books). In plain, unflowery language, but still full of emotion and imagery, Lavender writes about her sicknesses (cancers and lupus), a brutal car accident at age sixteen (this chapter is especially vivid and difficult to read at times), and how friends don’t know how to react to her weakened condition and often disappear.

What is most astonishing about Lavender’s storytelling is its directness. At no point in Taxidermy does she clutch her chest, fall to her knees and cry out “Why me?” She doesn’t experience any sudden religious conversion or think that suffering is bringing her closer to some sort of god. Lavender isn’t particularly angry about her many illnesses, either. She confronts everything thrown at her, looks it in the eyes, terrifies it and perseveres. She rejects both pain (actively refusing pain medications since an early age) and the messages her body sends her, further damaging her fragile health. Did she learn these survival skills by watching the women of her family fight back against their sometimes-abusive husbands and from the edges of poverty? The only time she cries is upon returning home after putting her nineteen-year-old dog to sleep, her faithful companion since age five: “Back at home I sat with his blanket and cried all the tears of an entire fractured childhood.”

Lavender survives all her illnesses, becomes an activist, writer and editor (the hipmama.com Web site, and the anthology Breeder, among other projects), learns to ride a bike, finds her voice and sings, marries a supportive and loving man, and has two healthy children – both conceived against medical advice. Her life is still very much in progress, even with the occasional health crisis, such as the one that frames the book. Lessons in Taxidermy is an extremely compelling read. I actually slowed down my usual reading pace to be able to linger on every word, phrase and image. Hopefully this is only the first installment of Bee Lavender’s autobiography.

Very highly recommended.
- posted by Synd-e @ 10:17 AM