Writing Oneself Back In: Narratives of Care, Grief, and Loss

Abstract

Each of these two extraordinary books has illness or disability as its primary focus, yet to call either one an illness narrative would reduce its accomplishment. Each book hinges on the author's ability to evoke suffering, but the medical aspects of this suffering—specifically interactions with health care institutions and workers—are background to each book's real interest. "Crying, and screaming, and raging against pain are signs of language undone," writes Christina Crosby (31). Each of these books attempts to recreate a viable language after language has been undone, and thus to recreate a viable self where selfhood was undone. Crosby writes that "living in extremis can clarify what is often obscure, in this case the fragility of our beautiful bodies and the dependencies of all human beings" (10). Alexandra Butler could, on my reading of her book, have written the same thing. Crosby is explicit that there are no "lessons learned" from trauma and disability (116, 189), but there can be clarity gained in reconstructed language. Perhaps that is always the goal of life writing, and these books seem better understood as life writing that happens to focus on illness and disability, rather than illness or disability narratives—a subtle but significant shift.