All Up In Paula Kamen's Head

Earlier tonight I went over to A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books to check out a reading by an old friend, feminist writer and humorist Paula Kamen. Paula and I met close to ten years ago while we were both doing feminist activism and writing about campus acquaintance rape. Just before I met her, she had begun to develop a daily headache. At first, it seemed like a simple consequence of stress and/or too much caffiene coupled with the intense hours she kept as a journalist/writer. Yet, over time, the headache failed to go away. Over ten years later, Paula still has her headache.

Faced with chronic pain, she did what any good journalist does -- investigate. The result is All In My Head, an informative and humorous memoir about her journeys through pain, hope, depression, medicine, and introspection in conjunction with her illness.

Paula has a great talent for telling stories, and from her reading, this book is no exception. She runs through the scientific description of discovering Chronic Daily Headache as a disease with both authority and vulnerabilty, teaching us about how it works, what it feels like, and how hard it is to live with, all at the same time. Her smattering of sensibility with humor lightens our load as we follow her through each frustrating realization as to the state of her mind and body, not to mention the decrepit and bloated state of modern pop/alt/mental medicine.

Yet, somehow, we march on with her through the story, curious to discover what she will do next. Will she find a cure? Will she find the cause? Part train-wreck, part saturday-morning cartoon, the book is both comical and compulsive reading. I highly recommend checking it out.

For more info, see Paula's Interview with SFist.