Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness

"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 managed to navigate education systems in both Kuwait and the United Kingdom, and inspire generations of students as a professor of literature. Head above Water is the memoir of Alshammari's life of triumph and resistance, as a woman marked "ill" by society and as a lifelong reader, student, and teacher. Charting her journey, Alshammari explores disability, displacement, and belonging-not only of the body, but of culture, gender, and race, and imparts wisdom of philosophical value throughout. It is people, human connections, that keep us afloat, she argues-"and in storytelling we have the power to gain a sense of agency over our lives.""--