Austin Area Reading Circle
Reader's Guide
October 2008
For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance
Victoria Zackheim, editor
For Keeps is an inspirational collection by top women writers on their relationships with their bodies. It explores with awe and intelligence the surprises and challenges of our bodies—whether caused by illness, aging, injury, or life circumstances—that make us rethink the way we see ourselves, and even live our lives. These empowering essays reveal the journeys women take as they age and change in ways both good and bad...
You can read Susan's review of For Keeps here.
Please bring some writing material (your journal, some paper, a pen) to our meeting. We'll do a couple of short writes (to share or not, as the spirit moves you).
- Whose story interested you the most? Why?
- Which story did you least enjoy, or skip (after reading a bit of it)? Why?
- In more than one of these stories, the writers claim that their body images were shaped by their mothers. Has that been true for you? If you have a daughter, do you think you had any influence on her body image?
- If you were writing about your own greatest body concern, at this point in your life, what would that be?
- When in your life were you most at home in your body? What were you doing? What did it feel like?
- When have you been least at home in your body? Why?
- On p. 196, Masha Hamilton writes about Afghan women's bodies in Kabul. "I understood that our Western preoccupation with our physical flaws is, in fact, a luxury," she says. Is she right or wrong, do you think?
- "It's a new experience, living in a body that feels old...my body surprises me every day..." (Joan Price, p. 244) In what ways does your body surprise you?
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