Sex with a Brain Injury

November 1, 2023
A personal study of the lasting effects of head trauma. At the age of 35, Liontas, author of the novel Let Me Explain You, fell off her bike and suffered what doctors called a "mild head trauma." That same year, she suffered two more concussions, when an infant car seat and a heavy potted plant hit her on the head. In 25 short musings--essays, verse, records of conversations with her wife--Liontas offers frank reflections on the physical, emotional, and cognitive consequences of her injuries. She also considers a range of related issues: her wife; queer identity; connection to her mother, an addict and a lesbian who abandoned her when she was an infant, and to her father, who disowned her when she married. She reports on the prevalence of head trauma among prisoners, which has given rise to the Trauma Justice League, and on concussions among famous people, including Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Henry VIII, and George Clooney. Concussions, Liontas reveals, changed her life, transforming her into a person with a chronic--although invisible--disability. Assaulted by debilitating migraines, the author also experienced "mood swings, disequilibrium, disorientation, disinhibition," and an intensifying "streak of isolationism." Even years later, she could not abide "crowds, spice, alcohol, concerts, intense exercise, hunger, temperature regulation, movie screens, maps, math, recipes, anything which requires holding on to two things in your mind at once." After the traumas, she writes, "you walk around with the sense that you are ghostwritten into your own life." That sense of disorientation affected her marriage, as well. The head injuries "had turned us into strangers" and, as the title reveals, affected sex. Though at times, Liontas did not know if she--and her marriage--would survive, her memoir stands as testimony to love and patience. An intimate memoir of a profound affliction and resilience.

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Starred review from November 27, 2023
Novelist Liontas (Let Me Explain You) details in this excellent memoir-in-essays the physical and emotional effects of living with head trauma. After getting her first concussion at age 35 in a biking accident, Liontas suffered two more within a year. She experienced debilitating migraines and disorientation, often forgetting where she was and fearing that even the slightest contact could reinjure her. Throughout, Liontas blends personal narrative with reportage and historical research to illuminate the shocking prevalence of brain injuries and the institutional mechanisms that cast doubt on those affected by them. In the essay “doubt, my love,” she reckons with the skepticism her chronic illness elicits from others and details how insurance companies and courts have long equated the symptoms of brain trauma with hysteria. The pervasiveness of brain injuries among prisoners is the focus of “professor x and the trauma justice league,” in which Liontas notes that nearly all repeat female offenders have a history of head trauma. The collection not only does the tremendous service of raising awareness about the millions of “wounded walking”; it’s also a profound meditation on love, as Liontas recounts her and her wife’s struggles to remain together in the aftermath of her injury. These unflinching and eye-opening essays wow at every turn. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary.