Sandra BeasleyRezensionen

I know severe allergy is a problem and yet I couldn't help but feel annoyed by the author. It mostly made me glad not to have to think about this kind of thing.

Sandra Beasley is an allergy sufferer, and she has plenty of funny/terrifying anecdotes to share. She's also well-researched on the topic, and provides lots of useful scientific information about how allergies actually work.

I was once a food allergy skeptic. Not that I totally disbelieved in their existence, of course: I was fully aware there people out there who could have up to and including fatal reactions to eating certain foodstuffs. I more fell in along the lines of accepting the need for a peanut-free table in the lunchroom, but thinking that most people were probably overdoing it a little. My skepticism relaxed significantly when I found a best friend (whom I later began dating) with a host of food allergies that could be set off by the slightest fragment of the food in question - soy, pineapple, etc. She takes care to point out when she can't eat something (every time we go out for hibachi, it's a hard-and-fast rule that there are to be no sesame seeds involved for anyone at the table).

After reading this book, though, I'm starting to think that we need to take it a step further. Like, legislating that people are only allowed to drink water in a public place, lest they inadvertently explode someone else standing nearby when they take a bite of Snickers.

Most allergy sufferers would take offense at that joke (and, I assure you, it is a joke), but not for the reason you'd expect. It's not that they're insensitive to jokes about their condition, it's that most only ask others to modify their lifestyles when it's absolutely necessary. The peanut-free table is a good example: It's not calling for a blanket ban on peanuts in schools. It's saying that, because severe reactions are possible even through airborne exposure, kids can't just bring a PB&J over and sit next to the kid with peanut butter allergies. (Some people do call for a blanket peanut-ban in schools, but this seems an unsustainable course as the kid grows up. Best to just invest in a bubble suit now and save everyone the trouble.)

All of this is by way of saying that we as a society can definitely do some (relatively easy) things to make sure allergy sufferers have a little bit easier time. (And no, I'm not just saying this because I want my girlfriend to live. Though that's definitely a factor.) We see a societal good in having AEDs on hand because for a relatively low cost, we can save some lives. Similarly, clearly (and accurately) labeling possible allergens in food is not harmful to the manufacturers. Indeed, they're not losing any more money than they already would have (because the peanut allergy guy probably figured it out on his own after the first purchase). You don't have to ban peanuts from the ballpark, but you don't have to go throwing them in lightly-packaged bags in front of other peoples' faces, you know?

I don't know how I ended up on a list from Crown Publishing to receive Proof and ARCs, but I did. So far I have just given them away or chucked them, because they were NOTHING I would have wanted to read. But, this one looked interesting. I hung on to it to see if it would talk to me.

It was great! I really enjoyed it. And, for an uncorrected proof, I have to say the writing/editing was better than most books I buy off the shelf!

Sandra Beasley is a poet who decided to write a memoir based on her life as a person with severe food allergies since birth. She is smart and knowledgeable, thankfully, but also funny. Her humor, even in the face of trauma (or in hind sight of it) makes what could be a very dry and sorrowful story engaging and entertaining. I recommend this book for just about any one with any interest in the topic, or just a wonderful story from a very talented writer. Certainly if you know anyone with severe food allergies or for sure a parent of a child with severe food allergies this book should be recommended, if not bought out-right and handed to them.

This is an excellent book for any one with food allergies or a family member with food allergies; it really gives you insight into what it is like trying to live with this in a society that doesn’t always understand or care.
I appreciated the inclusion of a lot of scientific and medical facts about the treatment and future treatments for food allergies, though take into account when the book was written, since its release date more has been learned and more treatments are in the works. It’s challenging to gather information on food allergies because there is still so much we don’t know and a LOT of disinformation floating out there.
Even though my allergies didn’t start up until well into adulthood this book really resonated with my own experiences and was very validating and informative. It really does help to know it’s not just you. And I really think it could be helpful for parents of children with allergies to read and she goes into how it effecter her, her thoughts and feelings, especially as she became a teenager.

This was an enjoyable look at a life I thankfully don't have to worry about! Beasley gives a lot of information in a readable and sympathetic manner without coming off as whiny. Lots of good stuff in here!

Sandra Beasley is an allergy sufferer, and she has plenty of funny/terrifying anecdotes to share. She's also well-researched on the topic, and provides lots of useful scientific information about how allergies actually work.

I was once a food allergy skeptic. Not that I totally disbelieved in their existence, of course: I was fully aware there people out there who could have up to and including fatal reactions to eating certain foodstuffs. I more fell in along the lines of accepting the need for a peanut-free table in the lunchroom, but thinking that most people were probably overdoing it a little. My skepticism relaxed significantly when I found a best friend (whom I later began dating) with a host of food allergies that could be set off by the slightest fragment of the food in question - soy, pineapple, etc. She takes care to point out when she can't eat something (every time we go out for hibachi, it's a hard-and-fast rule that there are to be no sesame seeds involved for anyone at the table).

After reading this book, though, I'm starting to think that we need to take it a step further. Like, legislating that people are only allowed to drink water in a public place, lest they inadvertently explode someone else standing nearby when they take a bite of Snickers.

Most allergy sufferers would take offense at that joke (and, I assure you, it is a joke), but not for the reason you'd expect. It's not that they're insensitive to jokes about their condition, it's that most only ask others to modify their lifestyles when it's absolutely necessary. The peanut-free table is a good example: It's not calling for a blanket ban on peanuts in schools. It's saying that, because severe reactions are possible even through airborne exposure, kids can't just bring a PB&J over and sit next to the kid with peanut butter allergies. (Some people do call for a blanket peanut-ban in schools, but this seems an unsustainable course as the kid grows up. Best to just invest in a bubble suit now and save everyone the trouble.)

All of this is by way of saying that we as a society can definitely do some (relatively easy) things to make sure allergy sufferers have a little bit easier time. (And no, I'm not just saying this because I want my girlfriend to live. Though that's definitely a factor.) We see a societal good in having AEDs on hand because for a relatively low cost, we can save some lives. Similarly, clearly (and accurately) labeling possible allergens in food is not harmful to the manufacturers. Indeed, they're not losing any more money than they already would have (because the peanut allergy guy probably figured it out on his own after the first purchase). You don't have to ban peanuts from the ballpark, but you don't have to go throwing them in lightly-packaged bags in front of other peoples' faces, you know?

“For those with allergies like mine, each day requires vigilance in terms of what we do, the company we keep, and where we sit in relation to that bowl of mixed nuts. One person’s comfort food is another person’s enemy. One person’s lifesaver is another’s poison.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, wee reader and I met yet another doctor, an allergist. She had a whole list of questions, a large stack of printed information to take home, prescribed a new ointment, set up a new bath routine, and a whole lot of other things that left my head spinning. Essentially, we have been battling eczema for quite a few months now (considering that he is only 10 months, a few months is a lifetime!), and his paediatrician suggested a blood test for allergies. Turns out he is allergic to egg whites, wheat and peanuts. That surprised us all, as both my husband and I aren’t allergic to any food, neither are our immediate families.

As you know, I am a reader. So one thing I knew I had to do was check out some reading material on food allergies. In a bid to learn more, but in a more personal way, as understood by someone who has lived with allergies all her life. And this one by Sandra Beasley looked ideal.

Because Beasley is allergic to: dairy (including goat’s milk), egg, soy, beef, shrimp, pine nuts, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, macadamias, pistachios, cashews, swordfish, and mustard. Also: mold, dust, grass and tree pollen, cigarette smoke, dogs, rabbits, horses, and wool. Her allergies are so bad that she couldn’t use the phone after her college roommate talked on it while eating a slice of pizza. As an infant, she couldn’t keep any kind of milk down – formula, goat’s milk, soy milk. Her parents raised her on juice and water! And at that time, there was far less awareness of allergies. Even her grandfather, a doctor, didn’t believe her dairy allergy, until she grabbed some cream cheese and swiped it onto her cheek and hives formed shortly after.

Beasley discusses the history of allergies, which is a longer history than I imagined. The term was coined by Austrian doctor Clemens von Pirquet in 1906. The RAST (radioallergosorbent test), which wee reader had to do in December, was trademarked in 1974. The skin prick test (which we have scheduled for later this month) has been around for decades as well. Interestingly – at least for this allergies-ignorant parent – the RAST generates a lot of false positives. For Beasley, it claimed she was allergic to both rice and pineapple, both foods she has safely consumed before.

One thing that really surprised me about this book was the various aspects of food allergies that are discussed, such as peanut bans on flights (Beasley is not allergic to peanuts), even some information on vegetarianism and veganism (her sister becomes vegetarian). I guess I was expecting something like a blog-turned-book. And I haven’t really got a very good opinion on those.

Beasley is an award-winning poet who used to feel that prose was the “dark side”. In an interview with She Writes, Beasley says: “The key to writing the book, I realized, was to admit that I didn’t have all the answers going in, and to make the act of questioning part of the book’s conscious narrative.” And that is what makes this story interesting. She discusses using (or in their case, the lack of use) of the EpiPen (a lot of Benadryl is consumed instead), even talks about wedding traditions and how weddings for her are hazardous (people having consumed cake and all that kissing and hugging), and dining out is a leap of faith.

“Getting ready to go out on a dinner date, I always line and shadow my eyelids knowing that by the end of the night they could be swollen and heavy with fluid. I coat my lips in Chapstick, not knowing if I’ll end up with a kiss or mouth-to-mouth from a fifty-three-year-old paramedic with halitosis.”

We’ve been so careful about what we feed wee reader, especially since he’s still exploring different tastes and textures. I would so love to be able to let him try foods off my plate when we are out, but when we do dine out, it’s usually at Asian restaurants and with their use of peanuts and eggs and wheat (which is in most soy sauces) and the risk of cross-contamination as well as the difficulty of explaining what we need, it’s easier to just bring our own baby food along. I just hope that he will outgrow these allergies, or perhaps that the blood test threw up some false positives (but we’ll never know for sure until we do some supervised food challenges when he’s older). I know a lot of people out there live with food allergies (and Beasley has so many more allergies than wee reader), but, as I mentioned earlier, to me and my family, it’s a new thing. The only relative with food allergies is my cousin who was born and lives in Perth, Australia!

If not for finding about wee reader’s allergies, I would not have picked up this book. But it is such a great non-fiction read – well-written, personal, informative, that I would recommend it to everyone, whether you have food allergies or not.

After living with a woman for 16 years who has had celiac disease since birth, I could feel Beasley's plight between trying to stay safe and trying to be "normal" in the sense that you can go out to eat and not worry. She rebuffs a lot of those critics who call food allergies a sort of bourgeois diagnosis, and show the pain and suffering (with a good ounce of humor) that a life like hers entails. I have an utterly complete author crush on her.

"Only a child/tries to staple a tear in the lifting shoulder of God."

Read. This. Book.

Sandra Beasley has a wide variety of food allergies- substances like wheat, milk, soy, and others can induce anaphalaxis if she ingests them, hives if she touches them. This is her memoir of living in a world in which substances that are laced in everything are poisonous. The fact that severe food allergies such as Beasley's are becoming far more commonplace makes the book all the more prescient. The book is a combination of memoir and scientific information about allergies. For all their prevalence, scientists know comparatively little about what causes allergies and how to prevent them. People like Beasley live with a vulnerability few others can understand. They are excluded from many communal pleasures, hence the title. No birthday cake, no cake at friends' weddings. A very few are even allergic to the proteins in semen. This was an interesting look at what it means to live with severe food allergies. Those living with food allergies will likely not find much they don't already know, but for those who do not, this is an interesting and introspective memoir, well worth reading.

Quick and easy read. Fun and informative.

Quick and easy read. Fun and informative.

I love this book! Witty, heartrending and clever. Sandra is also an engaging, animated reader. I met her at a Mississippi Writers Guild poetry workshop.

My daughter has a severe peanut and tree nut allergy and a fairly serious egg allergy. I'm a worry-wart by nature (just ask my kids!) but worrying about her allergies has added a whole different dimension to worry-warting. I am working hard, though, to be realistic and constructive, and to train her to navigate as safely as possible in a world that is not and should not be nut and egg free. The biggest challenge is finding the right line between taking precautions and being prepared--and figuring out what's reasonable to hope for or expect in terms of accommodation. I have never seen a topic attract as much vitriol as this one on comment threads: I get really depressed about the people who feel there's no sacrifice to their convenience worth making to help protect someone vulnerable in this way. Happily, in real life I have found pretty much everybody would rather be helpful than not. We don't try to create a safe bubble for our daughter, but it sure makes her life more fun and ours more relaxing if, just for instance, the cake at a birthday party is not laced with peanut butter. We always send along safe options for her, though, and she brings benadryl and her epipen along at all times. Now that she's older, she takes more responsibility herself, including reading lists of ingredients and declining food if someone can't show her that list. "Don't assume," is our number one safely rule, and "no epi-pen, no food" is the other.

But it's one thing to convince yourself (and her) that she'll be OK if she's sensible and prepared, and another to control the anxiety. So there's lots to appreciate about this memoir, including the author's frank descriptions of how difficult her allergies made her life, and her parents'. She has a much wider range of allergies than my daughter, and reading her story I felt selfishly grateful that my daughter's are fewer and more or less easier to control for. The technical stuff about allergies was not that interesting because we're more or less familiar with it. The author is rightly emphatic that people who claim to have allergies but don't aren't helping people with life-threatening ones get taken seriously. At the same time, she makes some good arguments about problems with attempts to create allergen-free zones--she is, or at least positions herself as, an advocate for good information and sensible policies, a moderate (despite the severity of her own allergies) amidst extremists on both sides.

This all seems like a good way to go forward, except that I felt, reading along, that her repeated insistence that she knows the world does not revolve around her allergies (e.g. she can't and shouldn't try to control other people's choices, homes, air plane snacks, lunch boxes, etc.) is undermined by her many, many stories of derailing outings, vacations, parties, and so on by having reactions severe enough to require trips to the hospital. Her determination to get out there and live with everybody else has clearly had consequences for everybody else and I wondered if eating out a lot (she spends a lot of time talking about restaurant food) and either having reactions or sending plates back that weren't prepared quite as specified is really as non-confrontational as all that. Is it really better to end up curled on the floor ill and needing rescue from parties than to negotiate safer food choices with your friends? In her case, given the range of her allergies, maybe there's just no degree of compromise possible and I can see resolving that it's worth some risks not to live like a hermit. But couldn't you ask your boyfriend to give up milk if the option is not kissing you? Which would he really prefer? Live and let live sounds like a good policy but it doesn't really operate as 'let live' in practice. But these are really tough choices and negotiations.

This is a very enjoyable read! The author's style is both witty and good-humored while managing to instill true empathy in the reader, and help them gain perspective on something usually taken for granted and not given a second thought. It's incredibly hard to truly explain an invisible disability without someone managing to stand in your shoes, so I was truly impressed by how effortless the author made this possible. With eye-opening views on food culture and the terror of an "allergy epidemic", it's wonderful to see someone who is not only able to describe what some of the problems we face with food allergies today, but has some clear solutions to them as well.

I don't know how I ended up on a list from Crown Publishing to receive Proof and ARCs, but I did. So far I have just given them away or chucked them, because they were NOTHING I would have wanted to read. But, this one looked interesting. I hung on to it to see if it would talk to me.

It was great! I really enjoyed it. And, for an uncorrected proof, I have to say the writing/editing was better than most books I buy off the shelf!

Sandra Beasley is a poet who decided to write a memoir based on her life as a person with severe food allergies since birth. She is smart and knowledgeable, thankfully, but also funny. Her humor, even in the face of trauma (or in hind sight of it) makes what could be a very dry and sorrowful story engaging and entertaining. I recommend this book for just about any one with any interest in the topic, or just a wonderful story from a very talented writer. Certainly if you know anyone with severe food allergies or for sure a parent of a child with severe food allergies this book should be recommended, if not bought out-right and handed to them.

Sometimes you can be won over by a combination of a cover and a thought. In this case, the cover was the little display copy of this book, light pink with a cupcake complete with a little death's-head ornament on it, and the thought was of my friend Kit, who recently moved to town and is allergic to around 3/4 of everything under the sun, it seems. Beasley's book promised tales of life from someone with just about as many allergies as Kit has, along with some scientific discussion of how allergies work, and why they seem to perhaps be increasing.

On the whole, this was indeed a cute and fast read. The little looks in at the science of how allergens work and set off terrible reactions, why some allergens are classed together, and the social and political implications of how people deal with allergies and the rising awareness thereof were interesting, although I could probably have used a bit more detail on some of it. But you do get a good taste for the way it works and how people are trying to deal with it. The amount of legislation in place, and awareness in restaurants and among common folk, has definitely increased.

But that said, if you're as allergic as Beasley, the world still has a ways to go, and the most interesting parts of the book are really the tales of her life and trying to deal with it. For most of her allergies, they're very severe; her dairy and egg allergies, for example, meant that if someone ate cake at a birthday party for her, and kissed her on the cheek after, she'd get hives. A knife being used to cut cheese, and then her salad, is enough to make her curl up and gasp for air. Much of the story tells of how her parents had to deal with her, the choices she makes to avoid using Epi-pens and just suffer through as much as possible, still trying to navigate relationships with friends and her boyfriend where she's careful, but still trying to live life as full as possible. Just all the realms in which her family and then she have to be cautious, because a tiny slip means a whole lot of misery, definitely get described and communicated well.

It's still a light and fast read, though, and you'll come away with a new appreciation of what it means to be highly allergic to food (and other objects), even if it's not directly applicable to you or those close to you. That's not always the point of reading though, is it? I liked the style well enough, and it was enjoyable, if not particularly memorable. If you're interested in the topic, it won't take you long to read through, and you'll probably like it fine. It does have some catchy bits... and it makes you glad that the allergies themselves aren't among them.

It was the title that caught me. I was just going to skim through it to get an overview, but I quickly got pulled in by Beasley's honest and quirky writing style as well as the amazing amount of information that she's packed into this book. I've been affiliated with the food industry for a big chunk of my life, and the issues covered in this book address that side of things, as well as the terrifying realities of living with multiple and severe food allergies.

Beasley really got the short end of the stick when it comes to allergies--the title refers to the idea that she can't even eat her own birthday cake at her parties, she can't even be kissed on the cheek by someone who did without getting a kiss shaped hive from it. Her salad, cut up special for her but, alas, with a knife that had also been used to cut cheese leaves her curled up fighting for breath and consciousness on a secluded couch at a wedding reception. Nightmare scenarios abound. But she's got a great attitude about it, though she must always, always, always be hyper vigilant and questioning of just about everything to keep herself safe. Despite all of this, she was a food writer for a couple of years, and she's very good about adding all sorts of background to the foods and why they cause allergic reactions in some, as well as just a general history of food that I found very interesting.

This book really opened my eyes to a whole lot of dangers and difficulties suffered by the allergic, and has increased my compassion level and sensitivity significantly. It's very well written, and very worthy of a read by just about everyone.

When I was a child, I only had two main allergies: dairy products and cats. I can't tell you how many times I heard other kids say "You're allergic to EVERYTHING!" A few years ago I added wheat to my allergy list, and that makes life harder but by no means impossible. I am not allergic to everything. THIS woman is allergic to everything, or so it might seem. She is allergic to dairy, goat's milk, egg, soy, beef, shrimp, pine nuts, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, macadamias, pistachios, cashews, swordfish, and mustard. Oh, and add to that mold, dust, grass & tree pollen, cigarette smoke, dogs, rabbits, horses, and wool. Whew!

And these allergies are not mild, but life threatening. Her allergens make her throat close up and she cannot breathe. She carries large quantities of Benadryl and an Epi-pen in her purse, and she has more ER visits in one year than most of us in a lifetime. A kiss on the cheek from a relative who has just eaten a frosted cupcake will make red welts swell up on her face. This woman is dealing with some serious stuff. Her allergies touch every aspect of her life, with consequences most of us would never think of.

This book is an interesting combination of allergy information and education mixed with personal accounts of a life with severe allergies. Even though my allergies are mild next to hers, I could relate to many of her experiences, as well as her desire to fit in and just "be normal".

Recommended for anyone dealing with food allergies, or anyone who has a child with severe allergies.

(I received this book from Amazon's Vine Program.)½

I could relate to Beasley's life story. As an insulin dependant diabetic since the age of three, my life has also revolved around labels and the many wonders of where and why sugar is added to food. I enjoyed Beasley's story about how her parents helped her as a child and her many experiences with allergic reactions. The book also contains very useful information about vegetarians, eating at restaurants, and general information on food allergies and where to go for help.