MacArthur Genius and two-time Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl introduces “Smile”, her memoir detailing her extraordinary ten-year medical and metaphysical odyssey that brought her physical, creative, emotional, and spiritual healing.With a play opening on Broadway, and every reason to smile, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high-risk pregnancy when she discovers the left side of her face is completely paralyzed.
She is assured that 90 percent of Bell's palsy patients see spontaneous improvement and experience a full recovery.
Like Ruhl's own mother.
But Sarah is in the unlucky ten percent.
And for a woman, wife, mother, and artist working in theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior brings significant and specific challenges.
So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face—one that, while recognizably her own—is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions.In a series of piercing, witty, and lucid meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, wife, mother, and artist.
She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain of postpartum depression, the story of a marriage, being a playwright and working mom to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness.