Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This is the first book-length exploration of the thoughts and experiences expressed by dementia patients in published narratives over the last thirty years. It contrasts third-person caregiver and first-person patient accounts from different languages and a range of media, focusing on the poetical and political questions these narratives raise: what images do narrators appropriate; what narrative plot do they adapt; and how do they draw on established strategies of life-writing. It also analyses how these accounts engage with the culturally dominant Alzheimer s narrative that centres on dependence and vulnerability, and addresses how they relate to discourses of gender and aging. Linking literary scholarship to the medico-scientific understanding of dementia as a neurodegenerative condition, this book argues that, firstly, patients articulations must be made central to dementia discourse; and secondly, committed alleviation of caregiver burden through social support systems and altered healthcare policies requires significantly altered views about aging, dementia, and Alzheimer s patients.
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Synopsis
Introduction: Critically Reading Dementia Narratives: Amplifying Advocacy.- Chapter 1: Of Wives and Daughters: The Stereotype of Caring Females?.- Chapter 2: From a "Care-Free" Distance: Sons Talking About Cultural Concepts.- Chapter 3: About Tradition and Triumph: Patients Popularise Dementia Narrative.- Chapter 4: On Reclaiming Authority: The Enabling Discourse of Alzheimer's Disease.- Conclusion: Dementia Narratives - Shifter of Perspectives and Values.- Bibliography.- Works Cited.- Index.