VIRTUAL EVENT: American Breakdown reading and discussion with Jennifer Lunden

[Jennifer Lunden]

I’m delighted to invite you to a free online event celebrating my new book, American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life. This reading and discussion is co-hosted by the University of New England’s School of Social Work and the Maine Women Writers Collection, and will take place from 6 to 7:30 Eastern Time on Thursday, September 28.

American Breakdown is a multidisciplinary memoir that interweaves my many years living with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and multiple chemical sensitivity with the illness story of diarist Alice James.

In Alice, I felt I’d met my Victorian counterpart, my kindred spirit. Why was Alice sick? Why was I? 

From my bed, and with the aid of interlibrary loan and a helpful librarian, I set out on a journey to find some answers. I spent years researching American history, 19^th-century and contemporary toxicology, biology, medical history, economics, environmental history, sociology, chaos theory, and more, and by the time I finished I came to see that American’s particularly virulent brand of industrial capitalism is at the core of what makes us a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.

Learn more about the event here: https://library.une.edu/blog/2023/08/29/american-breakdown-a-conversation-with-jennifer-lunden/.

If you are an educator and would like to order a desk copy for review, you can do that here: https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780062941374/american-breakdown/. I will happily come to your class via Zoom if you’d like me to speak to your students about the book and field their questions. Here is more information about my speaking experience, including upcoming events and podcast interviews, and links to ones that have passed: https://jenniferlunden.com/speaking/. I also do larger events for colleges, online or in person.

American Breakdown has gotten some excellent press, including this wonderful review in the Washington Post, and this one in the LA Review of Books. It also received a Booklist starred review, and was a People Magazine People Pick.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions: jleel...@gmail.com.

Jennifer Lunden

(she/her/ hers)

Author: AMERICAN BREAKDOWN: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life.

https://jenniferlunden.com

I respectfully acknowledge that I live, work, and play as an uninvited guest on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Aucocisco Band of the Wabanaki, which also includes the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot people.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

                                               -Martin Luther King, Jr.