Gerardo sicat autobiography of a face

Although this seems like the best choice at the time, it disables Lucy from addressing her own emotions. She worries about disappointing her mother every time she cries or expresses her fear. When she returns to school, Lucy must deal with the aftermath of her treatments. She finishes high school and attend Sarah Lawrence college where she studies poetry.

There, she begins to develop an identity again and develops strong, fulfilling friendships. However, she still finds herself missing the deep connection of a romantic relationship, believing herself too ugly to ever be loved that way. As Grealy progresses into adulthood, she develops a stronger sense of identity, has a successful career as a writer and poet, and even has multiple romantic relationships.

Despite this success, however, she remains deeply insecure. Obsessed with her face, Lucy believes that fixing her disfigurement will fix all of her other problems as well. She teaches Lucy to 'be brave' and 'not to cry. She blames herself for her mother's depression, the family arguments, and the financial woes. She prefers the hospital to home because the hospital staff and patients expect nothing from her.

When Lucy grows up, she starts getting self-conscious about her appearance. She decides to 'fix her face' to make her life bearable. She undergoes another series of reconstructive surgeries. Unfortunately, the skin grafts fail and leave her face permanently disfigured. Finally, Lucy resolves to stop looking at the mirror. A balloon was inserted into her cheek and slowly inflated with saline; a bone was excised from her leg and grafted onto her jaw, leaving with her trouble walking.

In the meantime, Grealy felt profoundly alienated from her physical self. The final chapter rushes through her college and graduate school years—glossing over her sudden popularity and her discovery of her own writing talent, as though any admission of happiness or success might discredit her prior suffering. Autobiography of a Face was published when Grealy was 31, and it brought her the literary fame she had longed for in her twenties.

Patchett portrays Grealy as the grasshopper to her ant, the rabbit to her hare: as magnetic and irresponsible as she is dutiful and forgettable. The dynamic haunts their relationship—an imbalance baked into their earliest arrangement as roommates. When Grealy sells a novel, spends her hefty advance, and then struggles to complete the manuscript, Patchett offers to ghost-write it for her.

The most dated thing about these books is the way Patchett and Grealy talk about the economics of writing. When Patchett falls in love with a poet, Grealy sulks. Later in high school, things get worse and she asks a counselor for help; the only thing he offers is to allow her to eat lunch at his office. During this time, she preferred the pain of chemotherapy to the pain of being bullied.

As Lucy's hair grows back, so does her confidence. She starts building new friendships, she still carries the weight of feeling that no one would ever love her in a romantic way. At the age of 16, she has her first reconstructive surgery and while not happy with the results, she hopes that the next surgery will truly bring her happiness.

Though she has many surgeries, she is never truly being happy about her looks. In high school, even though no one said anything about her looks, she became her own judge and reminder of what she was lacking.

Gerardo sicat autobiography of a face

Riding and reading helped her through her negative emotions. She attended Sarah Lawrence Collegeand felt acceptance for the first time because of how different everyone was. She makes true friends for the first time during college. As she encounters adulthood, being fulfilled with her career and having experienced some romantic relationships, Lucy starts to accept her image as it is and stops waiting for the physical beauty that will make her happy.

She claims to have finally become "acquainted" with her face and feels whole after a long journey of not feeling good about herself. The New York Times reviewed the book, stating that while some "will be disappointed that the author's new face is never described", the reviewer felt that this was irrelevant as "the text created a face for this reader, sculptured it down to the deeper-than-bone depths of character, a face that is taut, bright-eyed, fierce with intelligence and feeling -- complete.

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