Christie Pettit

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Massachusetts

A Personal Journey Through Anorexia

Christie Pettit developed anorexia during her first year of college. Here she writes about her battle with anorexia, drawing from journals she kept during this time.

Starving

551d6ef3-4a5d-4d8e-8459-3b2b2cbfb7cf-0

Frances Kuffel

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Louisiana

Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self

An intimate and darkly comic memoir of a woman who does a 180 with her body.
In the opening pages of Passing for Thin, Frances Kuffel waits at the airport to be picked up by her brother, Jim. He strides past her without a glimmer of recognition because she barely resembles the woman he is expecting to see. Jim had last seen her when she was 188 pounds heavier.
What follows is one of the most piercing explorations of the limits and promises of a body since Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face. With unflinching honesty and a wickedly dark sense of humor, Frances describes her first fumbling introductions to the slender, alien body she is left with after losing half her weight, shining a light on the shared human experience of feeling, at times, uncomfortable in one's own skin.
Buoyed by support from a group of fellow compulsive eaters she deems "the Stepfords," Frances adjusts not only to her new waistline, but to a strange new world--the Planet of Thin--where she doesn't speak the language and, doesn't know the rules. Her lifetime of obesity had robbed her of the joys of lovers, a husband, children--and even made it impossible to enjoy a movie, when standing in line was too painful, or travel, when airplane seats were too small--and hadn't prepared her for the unexpected attention from strangers, the deep pleasure of trying on a tailored suit, the satisfaction of a good run on a treadmill, or for the saucy fun of flirting and dating. She joyfully moves from observer to player, while struggling to enjoy the freedom her new shape has given her.
As Frances gradually comes to know--and love--the stranger in the mirror, she learns that this body does not define her, butenables her to become the woman she's always wanted to be.

Passing for Thin

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Deborah Hautzig

Texas

Second Star to the Right

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Portia de Rossi

-“An unusually fresh and engrossing memoir of both Hollywood and modern womanhood.” —Los Angeles Times

In this searing, unflinchingly honest memoir, actress Portia de Rossi shares the truth of her long battle to overcome anorexia and bulimia while living in the public eye, and details the new happiness and health she has found in recent years—including her coming out and her marriage to Ellen DeGeneres.

New York

A Story of Loss and Gain

"An unusually fresh and engrossing memoir of both Hollywood and modern womanhood." --Los Angeles Times

In this searing, unflinchingly honest memoir, actress Portia de Rossi shares the truth of her long battle to overcome anorexia and bulimia while living in the public eye, and details the new happiness and health she has found in recent years--including her coming out and her marriage to Ellen DeGeneres.

In this groundbreaking memoir, Portia de Rossi reveals the pain and illness that haunted her for decades, from the time she was a twelve-year-old girl working as a model in Australia, through her early rise to fame as a cast member of the hit television show Ally McBeal. All the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids, Portia alternately starved herself and binged, putting her life in danger and concealing from herself and everyone around her the seriousness of her illness.

She describes the elaborate rituals around food that came to dominate hours of every day and explores the pivotal moments of her childhood that set her on the road to illness. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner, ever more in control of her body and the number of calories she consumed and spent.

From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love and marrying Ellen DeGeneres and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women's health issues. In this remarkable, landmark book, she has given the world a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.

Unbearable Lightness

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#paperback #ex-lib #eating-disorders #mentalhealth #anorexia #ya #young-adult

Winner of the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award – Language Arts, Grades 7-12 Novels

Winner of the 2005 White Pine Awards, Fiction category

Selected for inclusion in the Best Books for the Teen Age 2004 List by the New York Public Library

Nominated for Snow Willow Award (The Saskatchewan Young Reader’s Choice Awards)

Nominated for the Canadian Library Association’s 2004 Young Adult Canadian Book Award


More than You Can Chew has been called a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for young adults.

Marty Black has retreated from a difficult family situation into the area she can best control, her own appetites. She may not be able to control her parents’ behavior, but she can decide what she will and will not eat. Eventually, she stops eating altogether. Marty is close to death when she finally asks for help and finds herself in a psychiatric institution. But recognizing her need for help is only the first tenuous step on a long road to recovery.

Marty’s ability to find a way to live, despite the powerful lure of anorexia, is the core of this fine, insightful novel.

Marnelle Tokio’s semi autobiographical story will resonate with every teenager who faces issues of family, body image, and self-confidence.

More Than You Can Chew

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#paperback #autobiography #nonfiction #eatingdisorder #memior #wasted #marynshornbacher #bulimia #anorexia #addiction #mentalhealth

A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

Wasted

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Diana Clarke

California

A Novel

A dark, edgy, voice-driven literary debut novel about twin sisters that explores body image and queerness as well as toxic diet culture and the power of sisterhood, love, and lifelong friendships, written by a talented protégé of Roxane Gay. Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the bond implies; they feel each other's emotions, taste what the other is feeling. Like most young women, they've struggled with their bodies and food since childhood, and high school finds them turning to food--or not--to battle the waves of insecurity and the yearning for popularity. But their connection can be as destructive as it is supportive, a yin to yang. when Rose stops eating, Lily starts--consuming everything Rose won't or can't. Within a few years, Rose is about to mark her one-year anniversary in a rehabilitation facility for anorexics. Lily, her sole visitor, is the only thing tethering her to a normal life. But Lily is struggling, too. A kindergarten teacher, she dates abusive men, including a student's married father, in search of the close yet complicated companionship she lost when she became separated from Rose. When Lily joins a cult diet group led by a social media faux feminist, whose eating plan consists of consuming questionable non-caloric foods, Rose senses that Lily needs her help. With her sister's life in jeopardy, Rose must find a way to rescue her--and perhaps, save herself. Illuminating some of the most fraught and common issues confronting women, Thin Girls is a powerful, emotionally resonant story, beautifully told, that will keep you turning the pages to the gratifying, hopeful end.

Thin Girls

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Ani Waggoner

In great shape except for some bending damage, as shown, from when it was shipped to me

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Illinois

One Woman's Journey from Captivity to Freedom, from Darkness to Life

The actual journal of one woman's journey in residential treatment for anorexia nervosa. Published to help medical professionals, family members and friends understand just what actually goes on in the mind of a person with an eating disorder and for those who are struggling to know that full recovery is possible as hard as it may seem.

Letters to Sarah

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Marya Hornbacher

The author shares her lifelong battle with bulimia and anorexia, chronicling her secret life of bingeing and purging and her obsession with food and body image, substance abuse, and sex

Softcover with tight binding clean unmarked text and covers 

Idaho

A classic of psychology and eating disorders, now reissued with an important and perhaps controversial new afterword by the author, Wasted is New York Times bestselling author Marya Hornbacher's highly acclaimed memoir that chronicles her battle with anorexia and bulimia. Vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching, Wasted is the story of how Marya Hornbacher willingly embraced hunger, drugs, sex, and death—until a particularly horrifying bout with anorexia and bulimia in college forever ended the romance of wasting away. In this updated edition, Hornbacher, an authority in the field of eating disorders, argues that recovery is not only possible, it is necessary. But the journey is not easy or guaranteed. With a new ending to her story that adds a contemporary edge, Wasted continues to be timely and relevant.

Wasted Updated Edition

Carrie Arnold

B. Timothy Walsh

A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with an Eating Disorder

An adult reveals her continual struggle with anorexia, which she developed as a teenager, describing the causes, symptoms, and complications related to the disorder, treatment options, and coping mechanisms.

Next to Nothing

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Harriet Brown

Utah

A Family's Struggle with Anorexia

I’ve never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the bony chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I’ve come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been my daughter. It wasn’t. It’s not. If I have anything to say about it, it won’t be. In this emotionally resonant and compelling memoir, journalist and professor Harriet Brown takes readers—moment by moment, spoonful by spoonful—through her family’s experience with the nightmare of anorexia. A guiding light for anyone touched by this devastating disease, Brave Girl Eating is essential reading for families and professionals alike.

Brave Girl Eating

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Jenni Schaefer

Wisconsin

Don't Battle an Eating Disorder Forever- Recover from It Completely Jenni Schaefer and Ed (eating disorder) are no longer on speaking terms, not even in her most difficult moments. In her bestseller, Life Without Ed, Jenni learned to treat her eating disorder as a relationship, not a condition-enabling her to break up with Ed once and for all. In Goodbye Ed, Hello Me Jenni shows you that being fully recovered is not just about breaking free from destructive behaviors with food and having a healthy relationship with your body; it also means finding joy and peace in your life. "Jenni Schaefer has dedicated her life to helping people overcome their eating disorders and live life to the fullest. She is an inspiration to all!" --Dr. Phil “Every young woman and man interested in overcoming disordered eating should read this treasure of a book.” -Leigh Cohn, M.A.T., CEDS, Editor-in-Chief, Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention “The beauty of Jenni's written journey through her tormented relationship with Ed is that it is honest, passionate, hopeful-but, most important, it ultimately assures the reader that life really can move on.” -Lynn Grefe, CEO, National Eating Disorders Association Combining Jenni's signature personal advice and unfailing encouragement along with valuable exercises you can do as you read, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me will give you the prescriptive tools to take the final steps in divorcing your Ed completely. Foreword by Carolyn Costin, LMFT, M.A., M.Ed.

Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life

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#Anorexia #motherslife #hope #mothersanddaughters #anorexianervosa #ClareDunkle

A Mother's Life with a Daughter's Anorexia

As heard on NPR's Diane Rehm Show!
Clare Dunkle seemed to have an ideal life--two beautiful, high-achieving teenage daughters, a loving husband, and a satisfying and successful career as a children's book novelist. But it's when you let down your guard that the ax falls. Just after one daughter successfully conquered her depression, another daughter developed a life-threatening eating disorder. Co-published with Elena Vanishing, the memoir of her daughter, this is the story--told in brave, beautifully written, and unflinchingly honest prose--of one family's fight against a deadly disease, from an often ignored but important perspective: the mother of the anorexic.

Hope and Other Luxuries

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North Carolina

Leslie Hiller is a bright, attractive, talented teenager who leads a privileged life in New York City. She is also a perfectionist. When Leslie starts to diet, she finds herself becoming obsessed, getting thinner and thinner, until she is forced to realize that her quest for perfection is killing her. First published in 1981, this groundbreaking novel has been lauded by countless librarians, educators, and teenaged readers. This new edition features an afterword by the author in which she discusses her own struggle with the disease, the difficult road toward recovery, and the lasting effects on her life.

J. J. Johnson

Nebraska

Asking for help is only the first step.
Jennifer can't go on like this―binging, purging, starving, and all while trying to appear like she's got it all together. But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning.
As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationship with food, and friends, and family―and how each is healthy or unhealthy. She has to learn to trust herself and her own instincts, but that's easier than it sounds. She has to believe―after many years of being a believarexic.
Using her trademark dark humor and powerful emotion, J. J. Johnson tells an inspiring story based on her own experience when she was hospitalized for an eating disorder as a teenager. The innovative format using blank verse and prose, changes in tense and voice, and forms, workbooks, and journal entries mirror Jennifer's progress toward a healthy body and mind.

Believarexic

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Joan Jacobs Brumberg

Good condition book, has lots of highlights/writing inside from previous owner.

Florida

The History of Anorexia Nervosa

An acclaimed classic from the award-winning author of The Body Project presents a history of women's food-refusal dating back as far as the sixteenth century, providing compassion to victims and their families.

Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs who used starvation to demonstrate religious devotion, "wonders of science" whose families capitalized on their ability to survive on flower petals and air, silent screen stars whose strict "slimming" regimens inspired a generation. Here, too, is a fascinating look at how the cultural ramifications of the Industrial Revolution produced a disorder that continues to render privileged young women helpless. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, Fasting Girls offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.

Fasting Girls

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Lori Gottlieb

Overall book in good condition, but marked as fair condition because there is some highlighting on the pages.

South Carolina

“A smart,funny,compassionate journal of the author’s bout with anorexia at age eleven.”  Entertainment Weekly

Based on diaries written in 1978, when she was eleven years old, the author offers a chronicle of her battle with anorexia and the pressures from family, peers, and society that led her to starve herself.

Stick Figure: A diary of my former self

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Indiana

An intense, elegiac portrait of young lovers as they battle personal afflictions, toy with veganarchism, and traverse the American countryside.

Binary Star

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Colorado

Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of five, she returned from a ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed and cried -- because she thought she was fat. By age nine, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school while watching The Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs and, ultimately, any sense of what it meant to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-creates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family and cultural causes that underlie eating disorders. Hornbacher's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a news service in Washington, DC, she is in the grip of a such a horrifying bout with anorexia that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Hornbacher's body becomes a battlefield: the death instinct with the drive to live, mind and body locked in mortal combat. Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back -- on her own terms. A landmark book from a 23-year-old writer of virtuoso prose, Wasted takes us inside the experience of anorexia and bulimia in a way that no one else has ever done.

Small amount of shelf wear on the paper cover otherwise never read or opened.  

In this searing, unflinching, honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image, take priority over every other human impulse or action, Portia shines a bright light on a dark subject, a crucial book, for those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves, or their bodies.  From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to the life of health and honesty, falling in love with, and eventually marrying Ellen DeGeneres, and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.  Unbearable  Lightness is a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.  

Ohio

Washington

Skinny 

Steven Levenkron

Tracing the origins and causes of this disease, the author shows how an innocent desire to lose a few pounds can manifest in life-threatening symptoms, discussing the social and physiological forces that shape the illness.

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Christie Pettit

Starving

Frances Kuffel

Passing for Thin

Deborah Hautzig

Second Star to the Right

Portia de Rossi

Unbearable Lightness

Marnelle Tokio

More Than You Can Chew

Marya Hornbacher

Wasted

Diana Clarke

Thin Girls

Ani Waggoner

Letters to Sarah

Marya Hornbacher

Wasted

Marya Hornbacher

Wasted Updated Edition

Carrie Arnold; B. Timothy Walsh

Next to Nothing

Harriet Brown

Brave Girl Eating

Harriet Brown

Brave Girl Eating

Jenni Schaefer

Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life

Clare B. Dunkle

Hope and Other Luxuries

Deborah Hautzig

Second Star to the Right

J. J. Johnson

Believarexic

Joan Jacobs Brumberg

Fasting Girls

Lori Gottlieb

Stick Figure: A diary of my former self

Sarah Gerard

Binary Star

Marya Hornbacher

Wasted

Portia De Rossi

Unbearable Lightness

Ibi Kaslik

Skinny

Steven Levenkron

Anatomy of Anorexia