Story Circle Network
Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

February 2003

with a woman's voice: a writer's struggle for emotional freedom
by Lucy Daniels

After struggling as a young woman with anorexia and a crushing sense of inadequacy, Lucy Daniels emerged from years in a mental hospital to become a bestselling novelist. In her new memoir With a Woman's Voice, Daniels reveals the strength and insights she gained while undergoing psychoanalysis and earning her doctorate in clinical psychology.

  1. Did With A Woman's Voice work as a memoir: e.g. after reading it, did you have a clear picture of the author's self and the life that it developed within? Why or why not? Did you find yourself feeling empathic towards her & her pain?

  2. What do you understand the relationship between her eating disorder and her family to be? How did she end up feeling like she was such a "bad" person?

  3. Her relationship with her father appeared to be extremely complex--how would you understand/describe it? How do you think it impacted her other relationships? Do you feel like you have an equally clear picture of who her mother was & how that relationship affected her sense of self?

  4. How is psychiatry & mental health portrayed in this memoir? Does this have any resonance with your own experiences/perceptions of how "mentally ill" persons are treated? What kind of reactions did you find yourselves having to the various therapists she encountered?

  5. How central to her self as a writer do you think her experiences with anorexia & mental illness were? Do you understand the ambivilence she felt about herself as a writer?

  6. What did you think about her choice of including her dreams throughout the memoir? Does it work to clarify her development of self or just confuse? Were there any dreams in particular that you found interesting/enlightening?

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