Listen to this post:
Last September on this blog, I let y’all know about Dr. Ann Millett-Gallant’s memoir around traumatic brain injury and art called “Re-membering: Putting Mind and Body Back Together Following Traumatic Brain Injury.” Now she’s doing a live reading from the book, which is something you don’t want to miss! If you’re in Durham, North Carolina, check this out.
Saturday February 22 at 2:00 PM
720 Ninth St.
Durham, NC 27705
Re-membering is a memoir about being congenitally physically disabled and experiencing traumatic brain injury. Millett-Gallant recounts her accident, recovery, and discoveries by engaging multiple genres of research and writing. Each chapter is composed of: personal narrative, research on brain injury and art therapy, disability studies and other critical theory, information from medical records, and voices from other relevant memoirs, as well as examples of her artwork. She underscores the vital roles of her family and friends, as well as art, in her recovery and provides hope and direction for others with a brain injury, based upon one survivor’s first-hand experiences. For more info, check out the book on Amazon at www.amazon.com/dp/1490524738.
Millett-Gallant is a lecturer for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she teaches art history and liberal studies courses. Her research, like her teaching, crosses the disciplines of art history and disability studies. Her first book, The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art, analyzes the work of disabled artists and the representation of disability in visual culture. Her first acting experience was starring in the short film “Basilisk.” She is also an amateur artist who enjoys painting, drawing, and collage.
This is a really unique memoir because it combines so many pieces together into a rich collage. You learn about Ann’s injury and strategies for using art for recovery as she learns about them, bit by bit by bit. Each new step and discovery is added to the collage figuratively. And the book is filled with images of the actual art collages she made to guide her on her journey and help her reflect on her own reactions to the brain injury. Pretty cool stuff!