Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg

May 1, 2021
Memoirist Rapp Black muses on the connections between her life and that of artist Frida Kahlo in this slim, loosely connected book of essays. In three previous books, including this year's Sanctuary, Rapp Black examined the impact of the loss of her left leg as the result of a congenital birth defect and the heartbreaking death of her 2-year-old son, who suffered from inherited Tay-Sachs disease. Throughout these circuitous essays, the author circles back to these subjects, often repeating herself from chapter to chapter and frequently tying her suffering to that of Kahlo, with her "many accidents and wounds and operations and recoveries." It's the suffering Kahlo who comes through most clearly here, as Rapp Black chronicles her travels to Mexico City to gaze at the room in the house, now a museum, where Kahlo kept her "corsets, special shoes and prosthetic legs," vivid photos of which illustrate the book. Noting the "disorienting" experience, the author writes, "I feel as though I am entering a sacred space with a touch of haunt." The author views Kahlo as an imaginary friend or even a twin, someone with whom she can ally against those with "normal bodies, easily moving bodies, bodies that did not come apart like a cheap Barbie doll." Another pilgrimage took Rapp Black to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where she viewed the clothes that represented Kahlo's "quintessential 'look.' " The essays make more sense as free-standing works than as elements of a larger whole, in part because they're arranged with no regard for temporal sequence. As a writer, Rapp Black is capable of elegantly expressing pain and sorrow, and she is clearly well versed in Kahlo scholarship. Structurally, however, the book is disjointed, its insights available in sentences or phrases rather than an organized, sustained argument. Glimpses into the ongoing repercussions of loss.

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