Stories of Illness and Bereavement: Audience and Subjectivity in The Therapeutic Narrative

Abstract

In September 2001, in Manhattan, I taught writing workshops at Gilda's Club, a support center for people living with cancer, founded in honor of Gilda Radner. The workshop was designed to help members write narratives about the experience of cancer. As a creative writer and a specialist in composition and rhetoric, I drew on the scholarship of writing and healing, as well as my own experience with writing about my mother's death from cancer, to create a series of classes where participants considered both the personal and public function of their narratives. Here, I discuss the role of audience in writing and healing, the relationship between healing and cultural criticism, and the storied experience of teaching in Manhattan during the 9/11 attack.