Head Above Water

Reflections on Illness

Head Above Water takes us into a space of intimate conversations on illness and society's stigmatization of disabled bodies. We are invited in to ask the big questions about life, loss, and the place of the other. The narrative builds a bridge that reminds us of common humanity and weaves the threads that tie us all together.

Head Above Water is a professor's moving account of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at just eighteen in a conservative Kuwaiti society, drawing from her diary entries and fading memories as the disease advances.

“Shahd Alshammari’s sensuous prose explores the manipulation of memory, the question of time, and gender politics. We are invited to reconsider the intricacies of love, the body, motherhood, the pervasive power of language, the power of women’s education, and the synergy between the Professor and the student.”—Jokha Alharthi Omani author of Celestial bodies, winner of the International Man Booker Prize (2019)

“Reading Alshammari’s work, I thought continually of Yeats’s famous line, “a terrible beauty is born.” In this book, illness is that terrible beauty, always affecting but never determining the author’s life.”—Arthur W. Frank, Ph.D. Author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller

“An important piece of life writing - Shahd Alshammari’s memoir breaks new ground in representing the lives of disabled Arab women. Exploring connections between the body, language, and culture, Alshammari’s new memoir is a sensitive and moving invitation to reconsider the stories that we are made of.” —Dr. Roxanne Douglas, University of Warwick

“A necessary and beautiful account of life with a sometimes-invisible and unpredictable disability, complicated by both patriarchy and racism, as well as a professor’s love letter to the act of teaching and being taught.”—Marcia Lynx Qualey (@Arablit)

Pages: 200

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