By the time she is in college, Hornbacher is in the grip of a bout with anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-created the experience and illuminated that tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
Marya Hornbacher in 2013 | |
| Born | 4 April 1974 (age 47) Walnut Creek, California, U.S.[1] |
|---|---|
| Spouse | Julian Beard (1996–1998) Jeff Miller (2002–2010)[2] |
| Website | |
| www.maryahornbacher.com | |
- In “Wasted,” Marya Hornbacher’s battle with her body is nothing short of epic, but unlike a true epic it is far from heroic. Hornbacher is the unlikely antagonist in her own life story, hating her body to the very brink of death. “Wasted” captures every dramatic, painful and often repulsive detail.
- By Marya Hornbacher Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia Analysis These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for.
Marya Justine Hornbacher (born April 4, 1974) is an American author and freelance journalist.
Her book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is an autobiographical account of her struggle with eating disorders, written when she was twenty-three.[3] This is the book which originally brought attention to Hornbacher.[4] It has been translated into sixteen languages and sold over a million copies in the U.S.
Bibliography[edit]
Her first book was Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (see above). This book was updated in May 2014, 15 years after the original date of publication, with a Post Script by Marya Hornbacher, '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.'[5]
Her second book is the critically praised 2005 novel, The Center of Winter, which follows a family in the aftermath of a suicide.
Her third book, published in April 2008, a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, chronicles the years following Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Her fourth book, published in 2010, is the recovery handbook Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps written as a guide to working the Twelve Steps for people who suffer from both addiction and mental illness.
Her fifth book, published in 2011, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power, explores spirituality and what that can mean to someone recovering—from addiction, mental illness, or both—who does not believe in God.
Her second book, The Center of Winter, published in 2005, received excellent reviews, and her second memoir, Madness: A Bipolar Life, was published in 2008. It was met with immediate praise and hit the New York Times Bestseller list. Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the 12 Steps, was published in 2010, and Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power was published in 2011. Both were finalists for the Books for Better Life Award. Also, within the past several years she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in both non-fiction and poetry.
Hornbacher plans to have her sixth book out in early 2019. In an interview in August 2015 conducted by Adam Walhberg of Minnpost, Hornbacher reveals more about the inspiration behind her book and the book itself. She speaks about 'the new edition of DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) [which] was released and it created...an...uproar in psychiatry and brain science.' [6] In this book, she is writing profiles of 12 people who suffer with mental illness to explore these philosophical issues on a more human level.
Biography[edit]
Marya Hornbacher was born in Walnut Creek, California and raised in Edina, Minnesota. She is the only child of Jay and Judy Hornbacher, professional theatre actors and directors. When Hornbacher was fourteen years old, she was accepted into the prestigious arts boarding schoolInterlochen. She later enrolled in the University of Minnesota and started writing for the university's student newspaper The Minnesota Daily. In the fall of 1992, she entered college at American University in Washington, D.C. She eventually obtained her degree in philosophy and poetics from the New College of California.
Personal life[edit]
Hornbacher married Julian Daniel Beard in 1996, but they divorced after the success of Wasted. The marriage, and eventual divorce, is also discussed in Madness where she attributes the nuptial failure in part to problems with drugs and alcohol, and largely to her ill-managed bipolar disorder. Hornbacher then married Jeff Miller.
She has now been sober for more than seventeen years (since the summer of 2001, according to Madness). She was honored with a major award, the ASCAP Award for music journalism, for her profile of jazz great Oscar Peterson (published January 2005).[7] She is also a two-time Fellow at Yale. She still publishes occasional journalistic pieces, as well as short fiction and poetry.
As of 2014, Marya is working on several projects. She is currently working on a nonfiction book about sex and sexuality in literature. She is also completing a manuscript of poetry and a manuscript of essays and has a novel in the works. Along with her journalism and articles, she teaches in the graduate writing program at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
References[edit]
- ^Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- ^Madness: A Bipolar Life
- ^http://www.maryahornbacher.com/
- ^Oo, Pauline (October 4, 2011). 'Pulitzer-nominated author offers insights on mental wellness'. St. Catherine University. Retrieved February 25, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Wasted Updated Edition'.
- ^'The next Marya Hornbacher book is coming and could be a game-changer'. MinnPost. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
- ^'New York Times bestselling author Marya Hornbacher to speak Oct. 28'. Appalachian State University. Retrieved February 25, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
External links[edit]
This firsthand account of eating disorders explains Hornbacher's relationship to food, eating, psychological health, through her told stories and essayed thoughts.
Wasted Marya Hornbacher Read Online
She tells of her eating disorder, which started young for her, around nine years old. It began when she became bulimic. This was the start of a binge-purge cycle, she tells. She explains how that looked in her life, and she explains what was happening in her life at the time that made her feel so constrained and panicked. Because these problems began when she was especially young, she explains that she felt completely unable to disobey her growing urges to eat excessively and then vomit.
Wasted Marya Hornbacher
By fifteen, she admits she was fully anorexic, and the doctors were concerned for her. She tells about her home life, about the difficulties in her parents' marriage. Hornbacher tells about the way her parents often inadvertently made her feel about herself, and although she tried to please them, her eating disorder became increasingly severe.
At its worst, the doctors gave her weeks to live. He weight was only 52 lbs. She discusses her path to healing, the decisions she had to make to pursue mental wellness and wholeness, the path toward physical health (which he says still plagues her—the chronic nature of her eating disorder left her with permanent health concerns). She explains that her ailments came on accident. She thought she was being healthy and responsible to impress her parents, but secretly, she was slowly starving herself to death.