The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

by S.L. Wisenberg

Author	: S.L. Wisenberg
Publisher	: Tortoise Books
Total Pages	: 273
Release	: 2024-10-15
Genre	: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN	: 194895494X

GET BOOK

S.L. Wisenberg, known for writing that is “seriously funny,” proves in this acerbic chronicle that a cancer diary can be at once hilarious, rageful, and feminist. She passes through the expected rites of breast cancer—diagnosis, surgery, and chemotherapy—but her responses are less expected: she throws a farewell party for her left breast, and rejects a “cranial prosthesis” in favor of using her bare scalp as a canvas for political messages. She insightfully criticizes the ad campaigns of cancer charities, the inept medical staff, and the inequities in the U.S. health care system she encounters as she navigates daily life with cancer and chemo. (There is much she disapproves of, from Brazilian waxes to books that blame patients for their own diseases.) Drawing on a wealth of personal, literary, and historical sources, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch creates an indelible image of a politically engaged, self-aware woman facing a daunting disease while examining her soul and society. (And riding the subway and teaching one-breasted.) It’s a thought-provoking memoir from a woman who questions everything and everyone, including herself. This revised and expanded second edition features new observations and reflections from the author.

Mammographies

by Mary K. DeShazer

Author	: Mary K. DeShazer
Publisher	: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages	: 251
Release	: 2018-05-09
Genre	: Health & Fitness
ISBN	: 0472900986

GET BOOK

While breast cancer continues to affect the lives of millions, contemporary writers and artists have responded to the ravages of the disease in creative expression. Mary K. DeShazer’s book looks specifically at breast cancer memoirs and photographic narratives, a category she refers to as mammographies, signifying both the imaging technology by which most Western women discover they have this disease and the documentary imperatives that drive their written and visual accounts of it. Mammographies argues that breast cancer narratives of the past ten years differ from their predecessors in their bold address of previously neglected topics such as the link between cancer and environmental carcinogens, the ethics and efficacy of genetic testing and prophylactic mastectomy, and the shifting politics of prosthesis and reconstruction. Mammographies is distinctive among studies of contemporary illness narratives in its exclusive focus on breast cancer, its analysis of both memoirs and photographic texts, its attention to hybrid and collaborative narratives, and its emphasis on ecological, genetic, transnational, queer, and anti-pink discourses. DeShazer’s methodology—best characterized as literary critical, feminist, and interdisciplinary—includes detailed interpretation of the narrative strategies, thematic contours, and visual imagery of a wide range of contemporary breast cancer memoirs and photographic anthologies. The author explores the ways in which the narratives constitute a distinctive testimonial and memorial tradition, a claim supported by close readings and theoretical analysis that demonstrates how these narratives question hegemonic cultural discourses, empower reader-viewers as empathic witnesses, and provide communal sites for mourning, resisting, and remembering.

Reading and Writing Cancer: How Words Heal

by Susan Gubar

Author	: Susan Gubar
Publisher	: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages	: 239
Release	: 2016-05-17
Genre	: Health & Fitness
ISBN	: 039324699X

GET BOOK

An important addition to the literature of cancer by an award-winning scholar and memoirist. Elaborating upon her “Living with Cancer” column in the New York Times, Susan Gubar helps patients, caregivers, and the specialists who seek to serve them. In a book both enlightening and practical, she describes how the activities of reading and writing can right some of cancer’s wrongs. To stimulate the writing process, she proposes specific exercises, prompts, and models. In discussions of the diary of Fanny Burney, the stories of Leo Tolstoy and Alice Munro, numerous memoirs, novels, paintings, photographs, and blogs, Gubar shows how readers can learn from art that deepens our comprehension of what it means to live or die with the disease. From a writer whose own memoir, Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer, was described by the New York Times Book Review as “moving and instructive…and incredibly brave,” this volume opens a path to healing.

From Whispers to Shouts

by Elaine Schattner

Author	: Elaine Schattner
Publisher	: Columbia University Press
Total Pages	: 352
Release	: 2023-03-07
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 0231549741

GET BOOK

It’s hard today to remember how recently cancer was a silent killer, a dreaded disease about which people rarely spoke in public. In hospitals and doctors’ offices, conversations about malignancy were hushed and hope was limited. In this deeply researched book, Elaine Schattner reveals a sea change—from before 1900 to the present day—in how ordinary people talk about cancer. From Whispers to Shouts examines public perception of cancer through stories in newspapers and magazines, social media, and popular culture. It probes the evolving relationship between journalists and medical specialists and illuminates the role of women and charities that distributed medical information. Schattner traces the origins of patient advocacy and activism from the 1920s onward, highlighting how, while doctors have lost control of messages about cancer, survivors have gained visibility and voice. The book’s final section lays out provocative questions facing the cancer community today—including distrust of oncologists, concerns over financial burdens, and disparities in cancer treatments and care. Schattner considers how patients and their loved ones struggle to make decisions amid conflicting information and opinions. She explores the ramifications of so much openness, good and bad, and asks: Has awareness backfired? Instead, Schattner contends, we need greater understanding of cancer’s treatability.

XOXY

by Kimberly M. Zieselman

Author	: Kimberly M. Zieselman
Publisher	: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages	: 290
Release	: 2020-03-19
Genre	: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN	: 1784509906

GET BOOK

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 2021 STONEWALL HONOR BOOK Meet Kimberly, a regular suburban housewife and mother, whose discovery later in life that she was born intersex fuelled her to become an international human rights defender and globally-recognised activist. Charting her intersex discovery and her journey to self-acceptance, this book movingly portrays how being intersex impacted Kimberly's personal and family life, as well as her career. From uncovering a secret that was intentionally kept from her, to coming out to her family and friends and fighting for intersex rights, her candid and empowering story helps breakdown barriers and misconceptions of intersex people and brings to light the trauma and harmful impact medical intervention continues to have on the intersex community. Written from a non-queer perspective, and filled with much-needed, straightforward information and advice about what it means to be intersex, this is a vital and timely resource for intersex people and their families, as well as the general reader.

Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction

by Judith Kitchen

Author	: Judith Kitchen
Publisher	: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages	: 248
Release	: 2015-11-09
Genre	: Literary Collections
ISBN	: 0393351009

GET BOOK

The best of short literary memoirs, essays, and reflections, many of which were written expressly for this collection. Also available The late Judith Kitchen, editor of the perennially popular anthologies Short Takes, In Short, and In Brief, was greatly influential in recognizing and establishing flash creative nonfiction as a form in its own right. In Brief Encounters, she and writer/editor/actor Dinah Lenney expand this vibrant field with nearly eighty new selections: shorts—as these sharply focused pieces have come to be known— representing an impressive range of voices, perspectives, sensibilities, and forms. Brief Encounters features the work of the emerging and the established—including Stuart Dybek, Roxanne Gay, Eduardo Galeano, Leslie Jamison, and Julian Barnes—arranged by theme to explore the human condition in ways intimate, idiosyncratic, funny, sad, provocative, lyrical, unflinching. From the rant to the rave, the meditation to the polemic, the confession to the valediction, this collection of shorts—this celebration of true and vivid prose—will enlarge your world.

Nothing Good Can Come from This

by Kristi Coulter

Author	: Kristi Coulter
Publisher	: MCD x FSG Originals
Total Pages	: 192
Release	: 2018-08-07
Genre	: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN	: 0374717087

GET BOOK

"Kristi Coulter charts the raw, unvarnished, and quietly riveting terrain of new sobriety with wit and warmth. Nothing Good Can Come from This is a book about generative discomfort, surprising sources of beauty, and the odd, often hilarious, business of being human." —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Recovering Kristi Coulter inspired and incensed the internet when she wrote about what happened when she stopped drinking. Nothing Good Can Come from This is her debut--a frank, funny, and feminist essay collection by a keen-eyed observer no longer numbed into complacency. When Kristi stopped drinking, she started noticing things. Like when you give up a debilitating habit, it leaves a space, one that can’t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting. And when you cancel Rosé Season for yourself, you’re left with just Summer, and that’s when you notice that the women around you are tanked—that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise. In her sharp, incisive debut essay collection, Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition. By turns hilarious and heartrending, Nothing Good Can Come from This introduces a fierce new voice to fans of Sloane Crosley, David Sedaris, and Cheryl Strayed—perfect for anyone who has ever stood in the middle of a so-called perfect life and looked for an escape hatch.

The Thin Ledge

by Daniel Shapiro

Author	: Daniel Shapiro
Publisher	: Greenleaf Book Group
Total Pages	: 200
Release	: 2021-07-06
Genre	: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN	: 1632992981

GET BOOK

What would you do if the person you love became someone else? In this profoundly honest memoir, Daniel P. Shapiro shares the reality of living through his wife’s mental and physical decline caused by a devastating illness. Shapiro was a successful attorney in his early forties when his wife, Susan, suffered a brain bleed and a diagnosis that her future was uncertain. Stunned, and with three young children, the couple made the most of the few years that followed, before a massive second hemorrhage changed everything. Physically, Susan was badly compromised in her ability to speak, see, and walk. Mentally, she spiraled into depression and experienced a drastic personality change. The Thin Ledge is about coping (often unsuccessfully) with the wreckage left in the wake of an illness that destroys a loved one. Shapiro addresses the questions that people living through unspeakable tragedy may never mention, but almost always ask.

Now Write! Nonfiction

by Sherry Ellis

Author	: Sherry Ellis
Publisher	: Penguin
Total Pages	: 291
Release	: 2009-12-24
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 1101162759

GET BOOK

An essential handbook for nonfiction writers, featuring the trusted personal writing exercises of today's masters of creative non-fiction, including Gay Talese, Reza Aslan, John Matteson, Tilar Mazzeo, and many more! Beginners and seasoned writers alike will relish the opportunity to use the top-notch writing exercises collected in Now Write! Nonfiction culled from the personal stashes of bestselling and critically-acclaimed nonfiction authors like legendary essayist Gay Talese (Thy Neighbor's Wife), New York Times-bestselling authors Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Tilar Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot), 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson (Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father), creative nonfiction icon Lee Gutkind (Creative Nonfiction magazine), and many other top memoirists, journalists, and teachers of creative nonfiction, these exercises offer fresh ideas for every facet of creative nonfiction writing, from pushing through writers block to organizing a story, capturing character to fine-tuning dialogue, injecting new life into a finished piece to starting a new work from scratch. Now Write! Nonfiction will take you out into the field with creative nonfiction's master practitioners: *Peek inside Gay Talese's mind, as he shares the "writer's road map" he used to organize information for his classic book Thy Neighbor's Wife and his seminal essay "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." *Learn from Reza Aslan why what you remember isn't as important as why you remember it the way you do *Explore the importance of cultural nuance in language with Ishmael Beah *Discover Lee Gutkind's simple trick, performed with a highlighter, that can help any writer identify whether their piece is truly showing action, or just telling An essential resource that will help writers of any level to hone their craft and get writing, Now WRite! Nonfiction offers over 80 quick, simple excersises trusted by top nonfiction writers to get their pen moving!