![]() ![]() ![]() It would not be incorrect to assume that beneath our own culture’s ideal of independent selfhood lies the very same question, for when all is said and done, isn’t this what every person desires? Unfortunately for Grealy, beauty equaled love. Sitting under the glare of fluorescent ceiling lights in exam room after exam room, Grealy is too young and too proud to ask the question out loud, and yet if one listened closely, it could easily be heard just under the hum of silence, seen just under the veil of downcast eyes. We see this same question come up again in Lucy Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, where she details her own search for someone to care for her and love her, but after almost thirty surgeries to repair her deformed, cancer ridden jaw, she still can’t find anyone to look past the edge of her wound, to listen past the edge of her silence. ![]() It is not the kind of question one answers quickly or without reservation, but it is a question that deserves a thoughtful answer. Near the end of Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a tragic account of two cultures at odds with each other, she tells the story of a Hmong patient who was being referred to a specialist for further treatment, and instead of inquiring about the physician’s skill or credentials, he asked, “Do you know someone who would care for me and love me”? (Fadiman 1997) It is an honest question that bears asking, and yet in all its naked simplicity lays the deepest complexity. ![]()
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