Porochista Khakpour’s Book: Sick

 "In an email to a friend, early in her battle with Lyme, Khakpour wrote, “I am very bad at this.” “This” means being sick, and it’s horrible to think that we’ve created a culture that expects people to do illness well. But we have. In a cemetery for 18th-century British seamen, I once examined epitaphs for the too-soon dead that noted that they met their ends with “resignation.” Now we have to “battle” cancer “bravely.” Is this the expectation now? That we be good at everything—even our pain, even our dying?"


Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, reviewed.