Review: Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley

I apologise in advance for any typos or odd symbols that find their way into this post. I'm typing this on my boyfriend's shiny new Windows Surface that is balanced precariously perfectly safely on a cushion on my knee. Thing is, because a) it doesn't have a proper keyboard and b) I am shit scared of breaking it, I'm writing rather like my dad right now... *pokes button with index finger* *pauses* *pokes again*

Summary: Like twelve million other Americans, Sandra Beasley suffers from food allergies. Her allergies—severe and lifelong—include dairy, egg, soy, beef, shrimp, pine nuts, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, macadamias, pistachios, cashews, swordfish, and mustard. Add to that mould, dust, grass and tree pollen, cigarette smoke, dogs, rabbits, horses, and wool, and it’s no wonder Sandra felt she had to live her life as “Allergy Girl.” When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, cupcakes and other treats of childhood are out of the question—and so Sandra’s mother used to warn guests against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with “Don’t kill the birthday girl!”

It may seem that such a person is “not really designed to survive,” as one blunt nutritionist declared while visiting Sandra’s fourth-grade class. But Sandra has not only survived, she’s thrived—now an essayist, editor, and award-winning poet, she has learned to navigate a world in which danger can lurk in an unassuming corn chip. Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl is her story.

So I don't have a whole lot of great experience with illness memoirs, as I've decided to call them. The only other I've read is Chocolate and Vicodin, which could have been great but... wasn't. Far be it from me to snobbily assess the merits of a person's illness, but it read like a rather long whine about how tough the author's life is.

Enter Sandra Beasley. She does not whine, or rant, or bitch. She does not melodramatically hold her hand to her forehead or sink to her knees amid wails of despair. Instead she just kind of... gets on with it. She doesn't state what her motivation for writing Don't Kill the Birthday Girl was, but it reads as a tool to raise awareness of just how dehabilitating severe food allergies can be.

It's fairly obvious that eating out at a restaurant can be problematic if you have allergies, but this book opened my eyes to the less obvious ways in which they can impact your life. What if you're a devout Catholic unable to take Communion? Or a child at a birthday party who sees all their friend eating cake? Sometimes you just don't think through the consequences of what can seem like a rather trivial illness.

All the rites of eating I've ever envied have been secular - defined by pop culture, geography, or my era. But in scenarios where the ritual is religious, and strictly codified, those with food allergies or other dietary restrictions experience a more profound exclusion. Around 2001, a controversy arose when Boston's Roman Catholic Church (seconded by the Archdiocese of New York) affirmed its decree that rice-based wafers were not an acceptable substitute for wheat-based Communion wafers - even for those unable to ingest wheat.
...
Or, as the pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Parish was quoted as saying during a 2001 interview with the Associatied Press at the time of the Boston controversy: "We many are sharing one bread and becoming one with Christ. We can't make different flavors for different folks and maintain that theological reality."

It's evident that an awful lot of research has gone into this book, in addition to the information that the author has presumably accumulated over several years visiting allergy specialists. There are historical and sociological points brought in, as well as visiting allergies from lots of different perspectives. The result is almost an accessible examination of allergies through the ages and it works really, really well. It is a memoir as Ms Beasley frequently draws upon her own experiences, but it's much more well-rounded and objective than you'd think.

For example, despite obviously, obviously, obviously having sympathy for allergy sufferers of all types (it would be odd if she didn't), she's able to discuss whether perhaps certain aspects are overhyped - there's a whole chapter on how peanut allergies have been blown out of proportion and she doesn't agree with nut-free airplanes, etc. Just to clarify, this lady is severally allergic to dairy, beef, soy, shellfish and a whole host of other things and yet she still doesn't need the world to alter itself just for her.

Not only do I like the book, I also like Sandra Beasley herself. Sometimes it can be difficult to review a memoir objectively when the voice and opinions of the author get in the way, but here she only adds to the value. This is an informative, objective look at allergies from the perspective of a likeable long-term sufferer. I really can't recommend this highly enough.

Visit Sandra Beasley's website here or find her on Twitter.