Title: Craniama: My Skull’s Remedy: An Ethnography to Survival
Author: Bryan D. Sisson
Publisher: Writers Branding
ISBN: 978-1-63945-455-6
Pages: 206
Genre: Self-Help
Reviewed by: Christina Avina
Pacific Book Review
One of the hardest things a person can do in this life is put themselves into the shoes of another person in an effort to understand the particular experiences, or overall journey, they have been on in their life. Whether it is a person of a different race, gender, sexual identity, or a very specific group of people such as those who have survived a grave illness or injury, the need to open ourselves up to listening and caring for others, and what they have undergone throughout their lives, is an essential part of fully understanding our own humanity.
In author Bryan D. Sisson’s Craniama: My Skull’s Remedy: An Ethnography to Survival, the author takes a truly intellectual and ethnographical expose to showcase and understand the experiences and tribulations so many who have suffered brain injuries have endured. The author shares the personal experiences he has lived through after experiencing closed-head injuries. The author’s experiences and journey through this injury is a book of both triumphs and tribulations, sorrow and hope, and through these passages the author hopes to provide a true road-map to those who wish to know more and understand this community.
The author did a brilliant job of crafting a book that finds just the right cohesion between personal storytelling and thought-provoking educational narrative. The amount of information and statistics the author is able to relay to the reader is equally matched by the emotions and intimacy the author’s own experiences have relayed to the reader. The gripping and thoughtful approach to the information the author is relaying keeps the reader invested in the book, and its educational purposes while also giving those readers who feel a special connection to this topic, something to hold onto.
This is the perfect book for those who enjoy non-fiction reads, especially those which act as a self-help and educational book on traumatic brain injuries of all types, and especially those who have experienced or have been struggling to deal with their own injuries to their brains in their lives. The imagery the author is able to infuse into his own narrative really brought the emotional and physical impact of the injuries themselves, and the trauma that followed, to the forefront of the reader’s attention so clearly and made for a much more impactful reading experience.
Thoughtful, engaging, and both haunting and inspiring, author Bryan D. Sisson’s Craniama: My Skull’s Remedy: An Ethnography to Survival is a must-read non-fiction and self-help book. The personal and intimate nature of the book, and its author, lend a sense of relatability and intellect to the majority of the book, especially those sections which really delve into the author’s fight for survival – both during and after the injury.
