Elizabeth Wurtzel

BY: Ramona Duoba

Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of the bestselling novel Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, died on January 7, 2020. She was 52. Her painful and honest approach to depression and mental health issues established Wurtzel as one of the most provocative writers of her generation. Wurtzel’s memoir, published in 1994 when she was in her mid-20’s, detailed her battle with drug addiction and depression. It was a success and opened the door to a new genre: confessional writing.

The book focuses on her time as an undergraduate at Harvard College. She recounts her years of casual sex and illegal drug use. When she succumbed to depression and despair, she became an early Prozac customer. It was a medication recently approved by the Federal Drug Administration. A New York Times review of the book called it “self-pitying” and “narcissistic.” Still, her honesty struck a nerve with readers, “Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive and it’s the worst,” she wrote. In 2001, Prozac Nation became a film starring Christina Ricci.

She followed up Prozac Nation with a collection of essays titled Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. She posed topless giving the world the finger on the cover. Another memoir followed, More, Now, Again, focusing on her descent into drug addiction and her eventual break up with Ritalin. In 2004, on a lark, she applied and was accepted to Yale Law School and earned a JD.

Meghan Daum, author and essayist, told NPR, “for a certain kind of young writer-particularly young, female writer in the 1990s, Elizabeth Wurtzel was exactly who you wanted to be and exactly who you were afraid to be.” Daum added, “She was writing about herself. She was doing so in a way that was really interesting and compelling, but it also got her labeled “confessional.” “And I think for a lot of us, that was something that we wanted to avoid even as we were writing about ourselves.”

It was a blow to her readers when she announced her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, but it was no surprise that she approached it with candor and humor. “I am having a double mastectomy with reconstruction. It is quite amazing. They do both at the same time. You go in with breast cancer and come out with stripper boobs. And by law, insurance pays for the Park Avenue surgeon.”

While she had her share of critics and haters, social media indicated there were more who loved her. Many took to Instagram to share how her books changed their lives. Her friend (and mine) Sharon Mahn, knew Elizabeth Wurtzel from their days as NYC attorneys. Their personal and professional relationship spanned more than a decade. Mahn said, “Long before there was Instagram or Twitter-her voice spoke to millions of women who followed her books, and her wise words and wisdom that resonated with so many will live on in her literary works.”