Through vivid and engaging narrative accounts, written and collected by women, Women's Narratives of Health Disruption and Illness: Within and Across Their Life Stories explores how women experience the health disruptions and illnesses that span their lives. The collection examines how women's broader and ongoing life stories impact and are impacted by health disruptions and illnesses. Organized into three parts, the chapters explore "Beginnings" in which health disruptions and illnesses impact early life, motherhood, and where early choices create the origins of health issues that impact later life; "Middles" which explores health experiences in and around middle age, or from the standpoint in middle-age looking back and forth; and "Endings" which explores narratives of ageing and end of life communication. Personal, revealing, and often beautiful, the women's narratives featured in this book will invite the reader into the stories and lives of others, and toward the reflection, learning, and personal transformation that comes from truly connecting with the experiences of others. This book will be helpful for scholars of communication, health, women's studies, family studies, and sociology.
Jennifer M. Hawkins is assistant professor of communication studies at Saint Cloud State University. Peter M. Kellett is professor of communication studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Chapter 1: This Wasn't How the Story was Supposed to Go: Navigating Unmet Expectations During High-Risk Pregnancies Chapter 2: "Giving Birth in a Distant Land: Patienthood and Self-transformation of Another Kind" Chapter 3: A Decade Navigating Food Allergies: A Mother's Narrative Chapter 4: Growing Up with a Chronic Illness: Easy to Conceal, Even Easier to Forget Chapter 5: Smoking: A Lifelong Legacy Chapter 6: Through the Glass Darkly: How We Fill a Diagnosis with Meaning Chapter 7: Living with Interstitial Cystitis: An Autoethnographic Account of Developing and Coping with a Chronic Condition Chapter 8: Narrating Menopause with English as a Second Language Chapter 9: I Like to Read, Play Cribbage-Oh, and I Have Alzheimer's: Managing Interpersonal Relationships and Early Onset Alzheimer's Chapter 10: Sylvia's Story/The Story of Sylvia: Narrating the Personal and Relational in Patienthood Chapter 11: Linked Lives: A Narrative Account of Positivity and Dialectics in Mother-Daughter Communication Near the End of Her Life Chapter 12: A Narrative Account of Father-Daughter Conversations Near the End of His Life Chapter 13: A Narrative Legacy of Family Caregiving
This book, the fifth volume in the "Lexington Studies in Health Communication" series, features a collection of women's narratives regarding health disruptions and illness. All volumes in this series emphasize the importance of communication in health care, aiming to assist providers with hearing and interpreting individual stories of patient experiences. Kellett (Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro) and Hawkins (St. Cloud State Univ.) have organized 13 narratives in terms of life development stages, forming the three parts of the book: "Beginnings," "Middles," and "Endings and Legacies." Contributors focus their interviews on questions related to communication, relationships, disruptions, and the impact of those disruptions on women's lives. Several chapters include follow-up discussions and references. Helpfully indexed, this compilation provides clear, unique perspectives and analyses of women's experiences as consumers of health care, with the purpose of enlightening students, faculty, and providers about the little-known perspectives, challenges, and conclusions of their clients. A real contribution to health communication scholarship. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. General readers. * Choice Reviews * This book offers powerful accounts of health, uncertainty, suffering, and strength achieved during loss and disruption of health. Contributors skillfully situate narratives within larger literatures such as resilience, support, and advocacy. Through a variety of case studies, in-depth interviews, autoethnography, and personal narratives, contributors position narrative and theoretical and empirical insight throughout varied experiences of humanity. This book will appeal to a broad audience and provides a selection of compelling stories that highlight the varied experiences of women's health disruption. -- Maria K. Venetis, Purdue University
