Product Description: A triumphant true story of loss, illness and recovery. How one woman turned the sow's ear of a chronic disease into the silk purse of a fulfilling life. Bag Lady is the poignant true story of a woman's struggle with the chronic, debilitating disease of ulcerative colitis. It chronicles how she coped with it before and after making the momentous decision to have an ileostomy and commit to wearing a plastic bag on her stomach for the rest of her life. Bag Lady runs deep. It is more than the story of a woman and her disease. It is the story of a life buffeted by a mindboggling series of profound downers, any one of which would defeat most of us. It is a metaphor for the physical and emotional "baggage" that encumbers every person's life. It reads like page-turning fiction, but it is all true. Bag Lady speaks to the millions of victims of ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease and colon cancer and to the families and friends who live their illnesses with them. It trades frankness and understanding for the euphemisms and misconceptions of diseases that, for too long, have been consigned to the shadows of polite discussion.
For Benitez fans as well as bag people Yes, much of this book is about the author's battle with ulcerative colitis, her ileostomy, and the bag she now wears. (Pause for a yuck break for those who need it.) But it's also more, it's the memoir of a woman partly, but far from wholly, defined by her gastrointestinal travails. The scenes from her childhood in Mexico and El Salvador are lyrical and provide insight into her writings. The later episodes on alcoholism, substance abuse, and infidelity are choppier and less pleasant, but honest and part of what has made her the writer she is. The twin sister who didn't survive, the broken back, the writing career that almost didn't gain traction, these are part of a writer's true story with too many subplots for a good novel.
If you've loved her novels you should read this book. But be forewarned that the expulsion of human waste is a major theme of the book, and the portrait of the author that emerges is far from saintly. In the end Benitez is more a survivor than a hero, but she comes across as a likable, if flawed, character.
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