Description

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When Rebecca Lester was eleven years old—and again when she was eighteen—she almost died from anorexia nervosa. Now both a tenured professor in anthropology and a licensed social worker, she turns her ethnographic and clinical gaze to the world of eating disorders—their history, diagnosis, lived realities, treatment, and place in the American cultural imagination.
 
Famished, the culmination of over two decades of anthropological and clinical work, as well as a lifetime of lived experience, presents a profound rethinking of eating disorders and how to treat them. Through a mix of rich cultural analysis, detailed therapeutic accounts, and raw autobiographical reflections, Famished helps make sense of why people develop eating disorders, what the process of recovery is like, and why treatments so often fail. It’s also an unsparing condemnation of the tension between profit and care in American healthcare, demonstrating how a system set up to treat a disease may, in fact, perpetuate it. Fierce and vulnerable, critical and hopeful, Famished will forever change the way you understand eating disorders and the people who suffer with them.


 

About the Author

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Rebecca J. Lester is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and a licensed clinical social worker. She is the author of numerous academic articles and the award-winning book Jesus in Our Wombs.

 

Praise For…

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"A refreshing perspective on the realities and challenges one faces when living with an eating disorder.... Recommended."
— CHOICE

"Impressive and exhaustive.... Those who treat, study, or are afflicted with an eating disorder in the family will find excellent resources here."
— Truthdig

“This is psychological anthropology at its best.”
— Anthropology News

“Lester offers one of the most compassionate, realistic, nuanced examinations of the complexity of ED care and patients I have read. Her book presents a much-needed discourse exemplifying how the American treatment landscape fails patients and perpetuates illness.” 

— Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work