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• 1 2017-11-07T12:38:33-08:00 My Body Part II 18 plain 2017-11-18T09:21:54-08:00 Page by Leah Fox
  

   

  I was not disappointed. My introduction to the narrator was her account of how she enjoys shoving the pulpy pages of books up into her most private part. As the narrator herself states, “You could truthfully call me a voracious reader” (Vagina). I am not exactly sure what I expected, but this certainly was not it. I was perplexed, to say the least. My state of perplexion was pivotal to my understanding of the work, however. Dirk Van Hulle’s article, “Hypertext and Avant-texte in Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature”, is quite accurate when it describes “disorientation as an aesthetic quality”. My sudden immersion into the narrator’s world, without any explanation or visible purpose, fueled my curiosity. There is something about her style, the way she uses phrases like “tacky folds” (Vagina), that draws me in. Out of context it seems rather odd. If I’m being honest, even in context it is rather odd. I like it, though. I like her honesty. I like her acceptance of her own quirkiness, her willingness to explore her own body without shame.

  "my body" is a hyperlink piece written and constructed by Shelley Jackson. It begins with an image of a female form and urges readers to click through her various body parts in order to explore her disjointed narrative. As I read through her tale, link by link, an image began to emerge. This is the account of a woman who loves certain aspects of her physical frame and abhors others, who inspects her own flesh and bones when no one was looking, just out of curiosity. This is the account of someone who embodies what it means to be irrevocably human. As Nicole Turchi states, in her piece “Confront the Physical Self”, “the observation of a body is the first step we take when getting to know another human”. Jackson takes something universal, the human body, and makes it personal. She balances the judgements of others with self-perception and concocts an image of adolescence and identity.