They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice is much more than a cancer memoir. It's a meditation on living. It's a pause between polarities. Cancer is almost an afterthought. Inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, it celebrates the tiny moments that spotlight the miracle of being alive, the messiness of being human.
Rice is a weirdly funny book about mortality. It's about family, genetics, nature vs. nurture, the Rust Belt, EPA clean-up zones, and more. Modeled on the work of stream-of-consciousness writers (Richard Brautigan, Virginia Woolf, Hunter S. Thompson), the book explores the way a mind works-complete with leaps and spirals-while reflecting on a life thoroughly lived against a dire breast cancer diagnosis.