A Face for Picasso: "Finding My Voice"–Chapter 4

by Ariel Henley
In this memoir, the author reveals how she and her twin sister survived the physical and emotional effects of a rare disfiguring condition called Crouzon Syndrome.

Here are links to our lists for the book: "Finding My Voice"–Chapter 4, Chapters 5–16, Chapters 17–22, Chapters 23–31
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. derogatory
    expressive of low opinion
    The derogatory treatment of people with facial differences isn’t new.
  2. cubism
    an artistic movement featuring surfaces of geometric planes
    This, along with his desire to depict more than one side of something simultaneously, was what inspired cubism.
  3. disfigure
    mar or spoil the appearance of
    It’s a story—my story—about what it means to grow up with a disfigured face in a beauty-obsessed world.
  4. subjective
    taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias
    Though the very idea of beauty is subjective and dependent upon the interpretation of the audience, she said in order to develop our understanding of art, we had to first understand the role of aesthetics in determining what makes art art.
  5. aesthetic
    a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful
    “We celebrate their beauty—their facial proportions, as if that is all they are. As if achieving a specific aesthetic is all any of us should ever hope for.”
  6. rectify
    set straight or right
    The procedure was necessary to rectify the premature fusion of our skulls.
  7. canon
    a body of rules established as valid and fundamental
    Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.
  8. attribute
    a characteristic that distinguishes objects or individuals
    She told me that appearance, much like design aesthetics, is arbitrary and exists only to assign meaning and purpose for those seeking it, but that ultimately our unique attributes are our signatures.
  9. fluke
    a stroke of luck
    This was a syndrome that had been thought to be only genetic, but our family had no history of the condition. With us, it was a fluke, a mutation of the genes. Nothing but pure bad luck.
  10. oblong
    deviating from a shape by being elongated in one direction
    And though surgery eased the pressure in our skulls—the pressure that had caused the bumps and the vomiting—the shape of our heads remained slightly too oblong to be normal.
  11. misshapen
    so badly formed or distorted as to be ugly
    Though not quite as prominent as they’d been before the surgery, my eyes were still large and misshapen.
  12. unabashed
    not embarrassed
    “Why do you say you’re ugly, sweetheart?” Mrs. Martin asked once, as she crouched beside Zan’s desk.
    With unabashed honesty, my sister quietly whispered, “Because I am.”
  13. compartmentalize
    keep separate; separate into isolated categories
    Whereas I could compartmentalize and temporarily forget about my differences—my pain—she could not.
  14. resonate
    evoke or suggest a strong meaning or belief
    There was a scene in the show where the child was teased as though her cancer was contagious, and it resonated with me in a way that was almost spiritual.
  15. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    I imagined a scene from the old cartoons where a character got hit on the head with a frying pan, sending a dizzying boing-oing-oing reverberating across the screen.
Created on Wed Mar 29 12:34:36 EDT 2023 (updated Fri Aug 01 11:42:26 EDT 2025)

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