Head above Water: Reflections on Illness

This lyrical hybrid memoir revisits a lifetime's worth of personal journals to slowly piece together a narrative of chronic illness—a moving account of survival, memory, loss, and hope.

Shahd Alshammari is just eighteen when she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and told by her neurologist that she would not make it past age thirty. Despite what she is told, by thirty, she has become a professor of literature, and has managed to navigate education systems in both Kuwait and the United Ki...