From journalist and professor at University of Texas-Austin, SLIP presents a revelatory new framework to understand the experience of eating disorder recovery by weaving together moving personal narrative, immersive reporting, and emerging science.
Written by journalist and professor at the University of Texas-Austin Mallary Tenore Tarpley, Slip offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding eating disorder recovery and interweaves poignant personal stories, immersive reporting, and cutting-edge science.
When Mallary Tenore Tarpley lost her mother at eleven years old, she wanted to stop time. If growing up meant living without her mother, then she wanted to stay little forever. What started as small acts of food restriction soon turned into a full-blown eating disorder, and a year later, Tarpley was admitted to Boston’s Children’s Hospital. With honesty and grace, Slip chronicles Tarpley’s childhood struggles with anorexia to her present-day experiences grappling with recovery.
This book tells Tarpley’s story, but it also transcends her personal narrative. A journalist by trade, Tarpley interviewed and surveyed hundreds of patients, doctors, and researchers to provide a deeper understanding of eating disorder treatment. She draws on this original reporting, as well as cutting-edge science, to illuminate what has changed in the years since she was first diagnosed.
As Tarpley came to learn, “full recovery” from an eating disorder is complicated. And that idea provides the basis for the groundbreaking new framework explored in this book: that there is a “middle place” between sickness and full recovery, a place where slips are accepted as part of the process but progress is always possible.
With new insights and an uplifting message, Slip brings much-needed attention to an issue that affects many. It offers a beacon of hope with its revolutionary perspective on recovery. This inspiring and life-affirming book is a must-read for individuals with eating disorders, their loved ones, educators, medical professionals, and anyone seeking to understand eating disorders and the path to recovery.
“In Slip, Mallary Tenore Tarpley carves out a "middle place" between acute sickness and full recovery for those of us with eating disorders. Tarpley is the perfect guide for this conversation, as she seamlessly blends memoir, reportage, and research. At all times, Slip remains accessible, realistic, and hopeful about the messy and maddening process of recovering from disordered eating. This tremendous book will comfort, inspire, and educate readers. We are lucky that it exists.” – Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group
“This is a must-read for anyone affected by the devastation of an eating disorder. Those who have suffered themselves will find a redemptive narrative to guide their recovery. Loved ones will understand more about how to support recovery without expecting perfection. And clinicians, educators, activists, and policy makers may decide their narrative should be less about eradicating eating disorders and more about elucidating them. We need to make space in the middle, in the shadows, where recovery becomes possible, just as Tarpley has shown us.” – Margo Maine, PhD, clinical psychologist and author
“There is no single image of eating disorders in the United States, but so often, we think about eating disorders as a linear journey with a neat and happy ending. Mallary Tenore Tarpley beautifully disrupts this narrative with Slip, an erudite memoir that moves us into a new generation in which we’re not defined by our disorders. It’s an essential addition to a canon of memoirs that shift paradigms and push us toward a new idea of what it means to recover and to fully, completely live.” – Evette Dionne, author of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul
“Slip is a gorgeous, paradigm-smashing book that explores the liminal space between sickness and health where so many of us live. Blending memoir and reportage, Slip defies tidy narratives to show us we are not alone when we struggle, when we strive to get better, when we slip.” – Emi Nietfeld, author of Acceptance
"Candid, courageous and meticulously researched, Slip is a game-changing addition to literature on disordered eating from the perspective of someone in committed recovery. Tarpley’s quest to exercise control in a turbulent world is meaningful and timely, and this book is a necessary read for anyone trying to understand—or grapple with—the dark side of perfectionism." – Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses
Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism and writing professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication and McCombs School of Business. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. She is the recipient of a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, which helped support her research and writing. Mallary graduated from Providence College and has a master’s of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives outside of Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children. Slip is her first book.
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