”So many memoirs make you feel that you’ve been sealed up inside a wall with a monomaniac. A really good one, like Autobiography of a Face, makes you feel there is more to ask and learn. You are not just seeing the writer; you are not trying to see yourself. You are seeing the world in a different way.”—Margo Jefferson

Foreword by Suleika Jaouad, author of the New York Times bestseller Between Two Kingdoms

A thirtieth-anniversary edition of Lucy Grealy’s celebrated memoir, a landmark illness narrative and a timeless exploration of identity, loneliness, the nature of beauty, and strength.

Thirty years ago, Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face launched the young writer into the top echelons of contemporary literature, winning her both acclaim and fame. An incandescent tale of perseverance, humor, and deep introspection in the face of emotional and physical pain, her powerful memoir—as evocative and resonant today as it was in 1994—speaks to us across time.

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of childhood cancer, undergoing years of chemotherapy that destroyed a third of her jawbone. It took her twenty years of living with the resulting disfigurement and a distorted self-image, plus more than thirty reconstructive procedures, before she began to come to terms with her appearance.

This beautiful and timeless memoir is a tale of great suffering and remarkable strength told without sentimentality and with considerable wit. In this unflinching coming of age story, Grealy reflects on how cancer transformed her face and her life, and captures what it was like as a child and a young adult to be torn between wanting to be loved for who we are and desperately wishing to be perfect.

This thirtieth-anniversary edition of a literary classic is an essential meditation on what it means to see and be seen.

A Landmark of Literary Nonfiction: Praised for its wit, intelligence, and incandescent prose, this is a foundational text in the genre of illness narratives, based on the National Magazine Award-winning essay “Mirrorings.”
A Story of Survival: A raw and candid account of a nine-year-old’s diagnosis with Ewing’s sarcoma, the grueling treatments that saved her life, and the decades-long process of reconstruction.
Identity and Self-Image: Grealy grapples with a distorted self-perception, facing the cruel judgment of peers while searching for a way to reconcile her physical self with her inner world.
The Nature of Beauty: A profound meditation on our culture's obsession with appearance and the conflict between the desire for perfection and the strength it takes to accept oneself.