The autobiography of [Lucy] Grealy's face comes to an end when she finally abandons the old body plot that structures the narrative, 'the framework of when my face gets fixed, then I'll start living (221): 'As a child I had expected my liberation to come from getting a new face to put on, but now I saw it came from shedding something, shedding my image.' Grealy recognizes that she had allowed herself to be more deeply scarred by culturally imposed shame than she ever had been by the original cancer. Surgery can never make her look like herself, while society urges that 'we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces behind to turn into ghosts' (222).

• narrative
• body image
• perception
• shame
• culture
• society
• body
• autobiography