A Fate Worse Than Death

(Paperback)

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Poems that interrogate the complexities of disability, based on the author's evaluation of her own medical records.

A Fate Worse than Death is a stunning poetic investigation of the worthiness of disabled life as told through the author's evaluation of her own medical records over the course of a decade. Living with treatment-resistant diabetes, bipolar disorder and generalised anxiety disorder, and complex chronic pain, Nisha Patel reveals how her multiple disabilities intertwine with her day-to-day life, even when care or treatments on offer are not available. As she works through her bouts of illness, neglect, and care, Patel reveals how poetry provides a way for her to resist the sway of medical hegemony, and instead offer complex accounts of pain, sickness, anger, but also love.

Navigating the menial and capitalist systems of health care and paperwork, documentation, and forms, Patel uses clinical texts in visual poems that show how words like patient and client underscore more medical access and denial of coverage than words like person and care. As she asks us to consider if her life is worth living and saving the future of Patel's disabled body and her desire for it is a building meditation as the collection progresses, ending with less of a finite ending of cured illness and disease and instead a look at how we can embody hope and joy in a disabled body, as it is the body, like time, that goes on.

Reviews

"A Fate Worse Than Death is a stunning achievement--rarely have I encountered a book so compelling and vulnerable. Nisha Patel's poetry burns with a fire that genuinely makes space in the world where we can exist and survive. Everyone needs to read this book."
--Jordan Abel, author of Injun and NISHGA

"A Fate Worse Than Death is polyvocal by necessity: to be disabled, Patel reminds us, is to be riven. Riven by medicine, riven by ableism, riven by sexism, riven by racism, riven by access friction, riven by our shifting identities coexisting in tension. Patel crips unexpected forms, from case notes to Wikipedia entries to patient handouts to medical imaging, to reveal how 'the disabled body is the most possible.'"
--Travis Chi Wing Lau, author of Paring and Vagaries

"A Fate Worse Than Death is precise, dynamic, courageous, and careful. Confronting self- and medical examinations of disability, these poems show that a 'fate' caused by repeat disappointments, inaccessibility, and costs leaves Patel no choice but to invent new terms of advocacy in order to document a glaring sense of agency and visibility. A certain voice, refusing to be erased, blooms in spite of the barriers and constraints both within the medical system and on the page."
--Britta Badour, author of Wires That Sputter

Author Bio

Nisha Patel is an award-winning disabled and queer artist and a Canadian Poetry Slam Champion. She is a recipient of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal and the Edmonton Artists' Trust Fund, and is the author of Coconut (NeWest Press). She lives in Edmonton, Canada.