The Beauty in Breaking

Harper quotes Hazrat Inayat Khan: “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open” (xi). She then opens with the image of a patient’s head in her hands, blood running down from his scalp into her gloves. She paints a clear, tangible picture of a typically chaotic day in the emergency room, where even in the chaos she finds the determination to do all she can to improve outcomes and save lives. She articulates her identity as not only a doctor but a survivor of domestic violence, a Black woman in a supposedly post-racial country, and a woman whose marriage ended just as her medical career was launching. She reveals that she wrote the book during a season of “starting over” (xii) and contextualizes the book by framing it in her experience and credibility as someone who has been broken and rebuilt. Harper compares this to the Japanese practice of Kintsukuroi, in which artisans repair broken pottery by filling in the cracks with precious metals to highlight the beauty of the breaks. She adds that she hopes to give readers an insider’s glimpse into the demanding work of emergency medicine and show them its “center” (xii).