Tender Points (Second Edition)

Author: Amy Berkowitz

Publisher: Nightboat Books (2019), originally published by Timeless, Infinite Light (2015)

Tender Points is a narrative fractured by trauma. Named after the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, the book-length lyric essay explores sexual violence, chronic pain, and patriarchy through lived experience and pop culture. First published in 2015, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.

"Tender Points does precisely what people are always saying can’t be done—it combines a moving, distilled, literary journey with an advocacy and even pedagogy, here about trauma, chronic pain, patriarchy, and more."

–Maggie Nelson

"The body, that is, in variable settings, frames and weathers. The stairs that 'climb up my arms and neck.' The 'I am bitterly jealous of the people who can always go back to being a barista for a while.' This book is a kind of clutching and being there for real, and that is what I look like. A book. That takes up. A visceral form."

–Bhanu Kapil

"Tender Points is one of those books that feels necessary. It takes on rape culture and cops and doctors, the whole long history of who gets to speak and how, who gets heard and who doesn’t and why not. I wish this book wasn’t as necessary as it is, but I’m so grateful to Amy for writing it."

–Stephanie Young