“Sex with a Brain Injury” by Annie Liontas: 5/5

“Sex with a Brain Injury” follows genderqueer author and educator Annie Liontas as they detail the intimate, vulnerable, and traumatic experiences of incurring multiple concussions that resulted in disability. 

I picked this one up because I saw bestie reading and loving it (@autumnintheoaks) and the title (obvi). I have a huge amount of respect for Annie because they used a splashy, eye-catching title to kind of bait and switch (respectfully) readers into a really, really important topic. The title suggests the memoir is mainly about sex and disability— but it’s so much more than that. 

Annie begins by discussing their own experiences with brain injury, how they struggled to heal and to be understood after each concussion. They discuss shame and frustration around their recovery and, above all, how isolating recovery can be. So isolating in fact, that it almost ended their marriage. 

However, most compelling aspect was Annie’s well-researched, digestible, and intersectional commentary of cultural implications of brain injury. From gender discrimination in brain injury research, slapstick comedy relying on head injury as humor to make them so commonplace in media that we don’t event bat an eye (think the three stooges, home alone, tom & jerry), the widespread epidemic of head injury in the NFL, to the correlation between head injury and incarceration—especially when considering Black men. 

The book takes the time and care to tease out societal implications of brian injury and that set it apart from most memoirs for me. This book make me think so much about my own experiences (I’ve had three concussions in my lifetime) and so much more.