Body Shell Girl
by Rose Hunter
Body Shell Girl is a memoir in verse about the first two years of a decade that Rose Hunter spent in the sex industry in Canada. When Rose walked into a massage parlour in Toronto in 1997, she was looking for a temporary fix to pay rent and avoid having to go back to her home country of Australia.Awkward, shy and looking for a place to belong, she found herself in a strange world she understood little about, other than here she could make more than rent. She planned to use her earnings to buy herself an education that would secure the career of her dreams.Naively believing she could do only what was required of her, without trauma or side effects and leave the industry on her own terms, she was shattered by what unfolded.This is her story. It is also a searing portrayal of this dehumanising industry in all its destructive power.
Paperback
English
Brand New
Author Biography
Rose Hunter is the author of six books of poetry, including Anchorage, and glass. Her poetry has appeared widely in literary journals in Australia, the USA, and Canada, and she has been awarded an Australia Council for the Arts grant.Rose has always drawn on her own experiences in her poetry, but in the last few years she has become interested in writing in a clearer way about her history. She is a survivor of the sex industry and intimate partner violence, and she is an alcoholic and addict in recovery.Born in Armidale, Australia, and raised all over the place, Rose went on to live in Canada for ten years, then Mexico for ten more. She is currently on the Gold Coast, and is enrolled in a PhD in Creative Writing at Griffith University.
Table of Contents
I.Portal, 1997 Just in the Room Snow Peas This Gets Messed up Pretty Quickly Hungry Ghost Poem In Dreams I Can't Remember, Imagining a Better World Rick Ladybugs and Wishes The Deeper You Go, into the Ocean Chariot II. Well I Got to Vancouver and All I Found Were Brothels More than the Strangest Stranger to Me Rent Day Red Velvet Suite An Act of Glossing Over Circus Poem Head Shelves and Crawlspaces Gravel III. Home Sweet On Jarvis Why We Are Girls Mr Donut I AmHe Is Aquarium Money: Some (More) Points In Dreams and in the Dead Future PoemEpilogue Notes Acknowledgements
Review
Trauma can destroy narrative or it can create a firestorm – in Body Shell Girl Rose Hunter has ploughed her memory and her 'radioactive' journals to take us not just inside the debilitating machinations of her time in the sex industry but right inside the experience itself. A highly visceral reading experience that left me body-shocked and reeling. In Body Shell Girl Hunter annihilates misogynist fantasy word by word, page by page.— Sally Breen, author of The Casuals and Atomic City
Review Quote
"Trauma can destroy narrative or it can create a firestorm in Body Shell Girl Rose Hunter has ploughed her memory and her radioactive journals to take us not just inside the debilitating machinations of her time in the sex industry but right inside the experience itself. A highly visceral reading experience that left me body-shocked and reeling. In Body Shell Girl Hunter annihilates misogynist fantasy word by word, page by page." -- Sally Breen, author of The Casuals and Atomic City
Description for Sales People
Hard to read but impossible to put dow.
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