Proud Flesh

A Memoir of Motherhood, Intimate Violence, and Reclaiming Pleasure

By: Catherine Simone Gray

Narrated by: Catherine Simone Gray

A searing portrait of a mother’s body—a resurrection and reclamation of pleasure after abuse, a study of intergenerational trauma, and a love letter to the bodies of women: as alive and unbound as the teeming Mississippi wilds that bear witness

Four months postpartum with her second child, Catherine Simone Gray is back at her doctor’s office, surveying a childbirth wound that refuses to mend. Proud flesh: tissue that overheals to become its own wound. Pregnancy and motherhood had been physically vulnerable for Gray, but this renders her most intimate parts unrecognizable—like her body is no longer her own. Has it ever been her own?

As she gets to know her body in its new form, she encounters, too, the girl she’d been at seventeen. It was summertime in Mississippi—wild, pulsing with life—when a man coerced her into an abusive relationship that would dominate her life for four years.

Told in parallel timelines, Proud Flesh grapples with the legacy of intimate partner violence in motherhood. With luminous prose and breathtaking viscerality, Gray makes legible the ways that abuse can imprint on our body and seethe undetected for years. She lays bare unspoken truths: that violence remaps how we connect with and care for our children. That the pains of our mothers—and our mothers’ mothers—endure, and can prowl the edges of our stories too. That even amid pain, our bodies can teach us new truths about our capacity to heal and experience pleasure.

Proud Flesh rewrites the body of the mother beyond the borders—bold, defiant, and heart-stoppingly true, it’s a binge-worthy memoir and a force of nature.

©2025 Catherine Simone Gray (P)2025 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“I could not put this book down.... A fresh vibrant narrative for mothers, women, and anyone who has dared to fully look at the scars of the past.”—MOLLY CARO MAY, author of Body Full of Stars

“Proud Flesh is a debut memoir that defies genre. Erotic, heart-rending, unexpected, courageous, breathtaking.… This book pressed itself into me and I will be recommending it for years to come.”—KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON, author of The Fourth Trimester

“With writing that is brutal and beautiful, Gray writes of motherhood and womanhood and, beyond that, of personhood, in ways that are cutting and gorgeous.”—ABIGAIL ROSE CLARKE, author of Returning Home to Our Bodies

A brave and healing memoir

What an incredible book! Whether or not you have been a victim of sexual violence, you know people who have, even if you are not aware of it. By bringing her experience into the open, Gray creates a space where women can hopefully feel less ashamed and more able to discuss their trauma with somebody safe in a helpful way. Knowing one is not alone is one of the most powerful healing forces.

Gray also paints a unique picture of what a healthy sexual relationship might look like as one is healing and adjusting to bodily changes after childbirth. Her book made me cry, but I felt joyful and hopeful at the end. Such an amazingly brave book. I did not want put it down!

Breathtakingly intimate and unputdownable

As a mother and survivor, I feel like I’ve been waiting so many years for this book. As if through powerful healing magic, Gray’s breathtakingly gorgeous and courageous truth-telling leaves me feeling intimately seen and held in ways I didn’t even know I needed. Proud Flesh weaves such stunning sensuality into each page that my own traumatic experiences feel honored, elevated, and repaired simply through reading it. I seriously could not stop listening. And Gray’s disarmingly sincere, grounded, and intimate narration of her own experiences brought chills and tears. This is one of those magical books that deeply and irrevocably changes you.