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Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine Audiobook
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Hailed by PopSugar, BookRiot, and Autostraddle, this is a vital exploration of the ways in which society overlooks—and fails—women with disabilities and chronic illnesses by assuming they are “just fine” Miriam’s doctor didn’t believe she had breast cancer. She did. Sophie navigates being the only black scientist in her lab while studying the very disease, HIV, that she hides from her coworkers. For Victoria, coming out as a transgender woman was less difficult than coming out as bipolar. Author Michele Lent Hirsch knew she couldn’t be the only woman who’s faced serious health issues at a young age, as well as the resulting effects on her career, her relationships, and her sense of self. What she found while researching Invisible was a surprisingly large and overlooked population with important stories to tell. Though young women with serious illness tend to be seen as outliers, young female patients are in fact the primary demographic for many illnesses. They are also one of the most ignored groups in our medical system—a system where young women, especially women of color and trans women, are invisible. And because of expectations about gender and age, young women with health issues must often deal with bias in their careers and personal lives. Not only do they feel pressured to seem perfect and youthful, they also find themselves amid labyrinthine obstacles in a culture that has one narrow idea of womanhood. Lent Hirsch weaves her own harrowing experiences together with stories from other women, perspectives from sociologists on structural inequality, and insights from neuroscientists on misogyny in health research. She shows how health issues and disabilities amplify what women in general already confront: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies. By shining a light on this hidden demographic, Lent Hirsch explores the challenges that all women face.
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“Tell[s] an alarming story about how difficult it is for women to access quality care, particularly those women suffering from poorly understood autoimmune disorders.”
— New York Times
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A New York Times Pick of Books of the Times: the Crisis in Women's Health
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About Michele Lent Hirsch
Michele Lent Hirsch is a writer and editor whose work has appeared online in the Atlantic, the Guardian, Smithsonian magazine, where she is a former weekly contributor, and Women Under Siege, where she is a former editor, as well as in print in Psychology Today, Natural Health, and the Bellevue Literary Review. She has also published poetry in a number of journals, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. With a specialty in science, gender, and health, she has been an adjunct professor of journalism at Manhattanville College, a guest lecturer at the New School, and a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library. She is a member of Columbia University’s Neuwrite program, a selective group of writers and scientists.
About Frankie Corzo
Frankie Corzo is a film and voice-over actress and audiobook narrator. She obtained a BA degree in theater studies from Montclair State University.