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What You Become in Flight

A lyrical and meditative memoir on the damage we inflict in the pursuit of perfection, the pain of losing our dreams, and the power of letting go of both.

With a promising career in classical ballet ahead of her, Ellen O'Connell Whittet was devastated when a misstep in rehearsal caused a career-ending injury. Ballet was the love of her life. She lived for her moments under the glare of the stage-lights — gliding through the air, pretending however fleetingly to effortlessly defy gravity.

Yet with a debilitating injury forcing her to reconsider her future, she also began to reconsider what she had taken for granted in her past. Beneath every perfect arabesque was a foot, disfigured by pointe shoes, stuffed — taped and bleeding — into a pink, silk slipper. Behind her ballerina's body was a young girl starving herself into a fragile collection of limbs. Within her love of ballet was a hatred of herself for struggling to achieve the perfection it demanded of her.

In this raw and redemptive debut memoir, Ellen O'Connell Whittet explores the silent suffering of the ballerina — and finds it emblematic of the violence that women quietly shoulder every day. For O'Connell Whittet, letting go of one meant confronting the other — only then was it possible to truly take flight.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 240
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781612198323
  • Genres
  • memoir, biography, adult
  • Release date
  • 2020