{"product_id":"bibliophobia-by-sarah-chihaya","title":"Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya","description":"\u003cp\u003eBooks can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s \u003cem\u003eThe Bluest Eye, \u003c\/em\u003ebecame a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBibliophobia\u003c\/em\u003e is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as \u003cem\u003eAnne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai\u003c\/em\u003e, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSarah Chihaya \u003c\/strong\u003eis a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York \u003c\/em\u003emagazine,\u003cem\u003e The Atlantic, \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e The Yale Review\u003c\/em\u003e, among other places, and she is the co-author of \u003cem\u003eThe Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism\u003c\/em\u003e. She has taught at Princeton University, New York University, and UC Berkeley. She is currently a contributing editor at \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e and lives in Brooklyn.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Womb House Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52018251432245,"sku":null,"price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0965\/6247\/9413\/files\/biblio1.jpg?v=1764701255","url":"https:\/\/wombhousebooks.com\/products\/bibliophobia-by-sarah-chihaya","provider":"Womb House Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}