Scarred

"Saraswati applies a feminist analytic lens in her approach to pain in this transformative work. She believes that everyone carries pain, and offers provocative theories about how to manage it. Part memoir, this book examines Saraswati’s own pain in addition to her scholarly critique, which enhances and supports her findings and conclusions." ~Library Journal, Best Books of 2023

"With her latest book, L. Ayu Saraswati offers readers an original, inclusive and intimate examination of pain through a feminist lens. As rigorous as it is readable, Scarred seeks to reframe our relationships to pain, healing, embodiment and enchantment." ~Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

"Drawing on her travels across 20 countries in just over a year, Saraswati, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies, shines a feminist light on pain. Her book fuses several modes of storytelling, including memoir, academic theory, ethnography, and criticism, and aims to reframe the reader’s understanding of pain and the female body." ~Publishers Weekly

"Theoretically astute yet intensely readable, this book suggests that all of us carry pain—and that everyone also inherently possesses the ability to work with pain instead of fighting against it. The book emphasizes that pain is integral to people; it’s not an incidental feature of circumstances. An exceptional discussion of strategies for processing pain with and through the body." ~Library Journal (starred review)

"How do we create new conversations with and about pain–conversations that are humane, enchanting, and subversive? How do we cultivate new, life-sustaining relationships with pain–rather than reject, repress, or in other ways deny it? (And why would we even want to do so?) How do we address both the private/personal and the social/systemic/political dimensions of pain? Traveling with and through pain, L. Ayu Saraswati explores these and related questions. She risks the personal, offering invaluable lessons and additional perspectives into the complex entanglement of feminist theory/praxis, healing, embodiment, enchantment, and pain." ~AnaLouise Keating, author of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook

"An intimate tour de force. Scarred is a necessary intervention into the human quest to understand pain and its im/possibilities. Indeed, even more so in this neoliberal world that encourages pain's suppression and elimination. From yoga retreats in Costa Rica, to the feminist practice of ‘gibberish’ in the mountains of Nepal, to experiences of ‘feminist enchantment’ in Ecuador, Iceland, and Catalonia, this book—part memoir, part ethnographic analysis—is a transdisciplinary and transcontinental fete of feminist cultural studies scholarship. Its theoretical insights, display of feminist autoethnographic fieldwork, and writing craft will have a lasting influence." ~Devika Chawla, author of Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition

"Saraswati artfully weaves memoir and auto-ethnography; theorizing and storytelling; and self-reflection and critical analysis to create a beautiful meditation on her feminist journey through pain. This methodologically innovative and theoretically provocative text is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into how we can live with pain differently." ~Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, author of Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach