"A World of Unknowing": Facing Shame in Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face

Situated at the intersection of literature and medicine, Autobiography of a Face offers a unique opportunity to explore the interrelationship of shame and illness. By interleaving what Grealy thought she knew with what she later learned (but still struggles to comprehend), Autobiography of a Face represents shame as a kind of epistemological fall, the leap from a world of unknowing that Grealy takes as she looks back at her experience of life-altering illness. In her autobiographical account, Grealy examines what it means to literally and figuratively "face" shame-to both acknowledge and give expression to it in the aftermath of pediatric cancer and recovery.