A memoir of menstruation, madness and monsters.
Every twenty-nine days, Emma Hardy is an absolute mess. She is irritable, depressed, angry, weepy, out of control. She lays in bed, stares at the walls for hours. Then it passes, and she forgets about it. When a doctor diagnoses her with PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, she begins to question when a mood is just a mood, and when a mood becomes an illness.
Searching for truth between the myths and taboos that surround menstruation, Hardy stumbles across crime scenes, feminist horrors and the history of women who have been institutionalised for hysterical illnesses.
Unwaveringly honest, perspicacious, brilliant and endearing, Periodic Bitch offers a new understanding of our beliefs about illness and the stories we tell, and announces Hardy as a profoundly talented new voice.
Reviews
‘By turns thought-provoking, rage-inducing and darkly funny, Periodic Bitch is a candid exploration of medical misogyny and the terror of the unknown: the strangeness of what it is to live with a poorly understood chronic condition.’
— Jennifer Down, author of Bodies of Light
Periodic Bitch is much more than a medical memoir, it is an unflinching exploration of what it means to be human. … I learnt a great deal from this book—as a health professional, as a woman, but most of all as a human being trying to create a pocket of space for myself in the world.’
— Melanie Cheng, author of The Burrow
‘From the bloodshot eye of a cyclone, Hardy gently points at each ring of PMDD’s vortex with unmatched wit and curiosity, inviting her readers into the inner workings of its torrents.’
— Madison Griffiths, author of Sweet Nothings
‘Periodic Bitch offers a fiercely human corrective to the historically clinical explorations of menstrual and mental health with a unique magnetism.’
— Kate Jinx, writer and film curator
‘In Periodic Bitch, Emma Hardy delivers a memoir that is both intellectually rigorous and literary in style, interrogating the cultural construction of the “female monster” alongside her lived experience of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).’
— Jess Lomas, Books+Publishing
‘A beautiful literary memoir that is part detective story, part love story … For those with PMDD, Periodic Bitch will be transformative—but all readers will gasp and admire how Emma Hardy captures the moment-by-moment experience of being alive.’
— Jessica Stanley, author of Consider Yourself Kissed
‘This book may be about the intense emotional strains of Hardy’s condition, but it’s the calm clarity of her documentary voice that makes it such a success. Her curiosity takes us to medical, cultural, and historic places, alongside her attempt to document her own human condition. There is love and pain here, but never hysteria or wallowing. To witness her confusion as she navigates a landscape of blatant medical misogyny is to feel flames of fury licking up inside your own walls. The granular, quotidian details of her own life are infinitely relatable and endearing.’
— Bri Lee, News & Reviews
‘Revelatory. Emma Hardy blends astute research and the poetry of pain in a word-perfect memoir. Clever, funny and assured, Periodic Bitch is essential reading that illuminates one of our least understood and most destructive illnesses. Through her candid and moving self-reflection, Hardy resolutely captures the heartache of having a uterus that’s trying to kill you (and everyone else).’
— Anna Spargo-Ryan, author of A Kind of Magic
‘Periodic Bitch tracks the grinding cycles of everyday misogyny, existential uncertainty and the (sometimes) special powers of monstrosity in the same way it tracks the moods of Hardy’s menstruation: You know it’s coming, but how much damage might it cause? This work of menstrual poetics is intense and feral, as it must be.’
— Hayley Singer, author of Abandon Every Hope
emma hardy 
You must be logged in to post a comment.