Book Review: Wondering Who You Are by Sonya Lea

                                                                                  

Memoir, one of the genres of literary writings, has been in practice for centuries. Memoirs present the personal and sometimes the most intimate moments of the writers. Sonya Lee’s Wondering Who You are, originally published in 2015 is one of such memoirs which presents the trauma that the writer experiences following the brain injury of her husband and perseverance she shows in overcoming that trauma. The memoir also presents, at times, in the most explicit and blatant words, the most intimate moments of her life which for some of the readers might find too radical.

Lea starts off telling the readers how she met Richard, a 16 years old boy with athletic body at the then time, who would later become her husband. As it happens with many successfully and happily married couple, many disagreements arose in their lives too. However, the strength of their commitment to each other is what carried their sincere relationship throughout years. On the 23^rd year of their marriage, the couple face a horrible challenge: Richard is diagnosed with a rare type of appendix cancer. Together, they stand up against this adversity. Richard undergoes a successful surgery but at the cost of his loss of memory: he can no longer recognize the world around him. He experiences a partial speech impairment. Lee has spent a significant number of words in describing her husband’s post-surgery days when he does not recognize his wife, children, work and so on. The readers will most likely become emotional while reading this episode.

However, the scope of this memoir does not end here. Lea tells the readers how she overcame this adversity and how her life and her identity were affected by the unfavorable events of her life. She has tried to go beyond the simple narration of her life’s happening and has presented the issues of trauma, identity, subjectivity and so on which will engage the readers and make them ponder over those issues. For example, readers are introduced with the questions such as:  what is it that makes us ourselves? What are the origins of our personality? And how personal life story really shapes our behaviour?

Lea has managed to achieve a smooth narration. The entire book has been divided into 21 chapters of variable length, and each chapter has been given a short and a descriptive name. Language is smooth too and readers will find so many rhythmic and catchy expressions through out the book. For instance, she tells an entire pre and post-surgery days of her husband in one expression: “My husband has died in surgery, but his body remained alive”.  Similarly, expressions like “It appears as if his former self has died, and he awoke in a new life” make readers read the lines again and again. At times, her language becomes philosophical as in this example: “We are all storytellers. We remember. Or we think we remember. Every day we wake up and create a story about who we are. We create ourselves from the remnants of our past, a past that exists as we imagine it to be. Before we raise our heads from the pillow, we fix our beliefs in our memory, and we construct our remembered roles - child, parent, lover, worker – and we thrust our expectant bodies out of bed.”. Similarly, throughout the book, Lea refers to her husband’s loss of memory as to the death of the man she knew. So, in a sense, she resuscitates life in him by bringing memory back in him. She tries to recover his husband by telling him what he was like in the past, what interests he had, she showed him their mutual family photos. Readers may ponder over a question: what would have Richard become if he had not been taken care of by his wife? Lea seems to be suggesting we are defined by our memories; our experiences and our personal story is what lies behind what makes us ourselves.

As seen in most of the memoirs, readers find the writer very determined, strong and steadfast who perseveres. She shows her maturity and her dedication by standing by her husband who does not even remember their wedding day. Her unflinching support to her husband eases his process of getting back to the normal life. Lea’s character can be a great motivation for most of the readers who easily give in in their fight against adversities of life.

 Autobiographies or memoirs tend to be over exaggerative sometimes and many of the thing writers include do not look credible. However, Lea has tried to establish her credibility by being direct in her expressions without using sugar-coated details (which some traditional readers might find uncomfortable to some extent).  For instance, she presents their sexual acts and the inability of her husband to have sex with her in the post-surgery days. Her openly mentions their sex life as in this statement: “Sex had kept us together”.  She mentions that Richard could not please her in his post-surgery days even though he tries to please her in every way possible. Due to the loss of memory, he even forgets many things about sex. What she does to make him recall it is what readers may find hard to digest. She offers his husband to have another guy in bed after three ineffective years so that he could learn some lessons, and Richard agrees. For traditional readers, this part of the book can be a controversial one and they might take Lea as immoral and selfish who can cross any boundary to fulfil her bodily desires. It takes guts to write about one’s weakness or the seamy side of one’s life and she does it in her writing which lends credibility to her writing.

Lea has shown her mastery over the narration and description once again with this memoir. A prominent story writer, Lea has stood up to the expectation of her readers and has not let them down. By perfectly blending her personal life and a philosophy of life, she has made the book more than a traditional memoir. The resilience she exhibits against the unexpected miseries that befall on her can be a great source of motivation for the readers.