Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness

From the author of Sexism Ed and Grace Period.

When the people who are supposed to nurture you hurt you the most, how do you reckon with the story of your own survival? Final Girl shows that you can grow stronger from circumstances that could break anyone.

This striking essay collection is not about brokenness, but rather about the slow realization of what the author survived and how she grew stronger from a place of vulnerability. Kelly J. Baker writes, "Survival was the story that I kept writing toward; it was the story that I kept trying to tell. It was the story I had to tell, often without quite noticing. It was story about abuse, brokenness, and what it might mean to mend." 

These stark, haunting essays reckon with what it means to be shattered by those you love and trust and what it takes to pick up the pieces in the aftermath. Baker tackles family trauma, parental abuse, grief and her own mental illness. By facing the things she would like to forget, she shows us how some trauma sticks with us no matter how we try to move past it. What does it take to learn to live with the trauma we experience? You survive it, and you mend yourself, and you surround yourself with love.