Autobiographical Books Research Articles

Political Autobiography and Race: The Case of Barack Obama

This article analyses how Barack Obama employs the concept of race in his three autobiographical books. Even though they complement each other chronologically, these are three very different works. Dreams from My Father (1995) is semifictional and shares similarities with African-American versions of the Bildungsroman and autofiction. The Audacity of Hope (2006) is a campaign book that downplays race. A Promised Land (2020) is a presidential memoir warning of impending democratic crisis. In each of these works, Obama puts the concept of race to use in very different ways, with genre playing an important part in the process.

Set in motion. Paradoxical narratives of becoming Swedish digital media influencers

AbstractThis article analyzes how Swedish digital media influencers make sense of their careers in print media interviews and autobiographical books. I explore how influencers use metaphors involving motion, speed and acceleration to describe, explain and legitimate the various circumstances and phases of their career development, and how these metaphors may be viewed in the wider context of social acceleration and conflicting gender norms. I show that the valorization of neoliberal ideals that promote individuality, flexibility, entrepreneurship, and passion as the basis for career choices is facilitated by the rapidly changing technology that influencers use. This does not imply, however, that female influencers are empowered or breaking norms. Instead, their narratives reflect traditional gender norms, such as assigning themselves passive roles in their career development. This analysis illustrates a paradox in the work of influencers: it is fast‐paced and ever‐changing, dependent on algorithms and platforms run by multinational companies, but at the same time, it must be slow, static, and authentic, organically growing through listening, sensing and the building of relationships. I show that neoliberal ideals around work are intertwined with traditional notions of femininity, and that these ideals reinforce a normative view of women's work—including notions of never‐idle hands and a perpetual availability to serve the needs of others—as “non‐work.”

Говард Фаст и советские писатели. Статья 2. «Жертва самого невероятного мошенничества": 1955-1959

The article reconstructs Howard Fast’s literary contacts with Soviet writers during the Khrushchev Thaw and traces the history of his painful break with the Communist movement. Based on Fast’s autobiographical books, personal correspondence, as well as articles in the Party press (Masses and Mainstream, Daily Worker), the paper demonstrates that at the beginning of 1956 the writer condemned the Stalinist regime as “bloody” and “criminal”. However, in his correspondence with the Soviet friends (Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy) Fast tried not to enter into direct confrontation and only lamented the plight of the leftist movement in America. His Soviet friends learned about the writer’s departure from the US Communist Party from the press only in February 1957. Having every reason to believe that Fast would have informed them about such a serious step personally in a confidential manner, prominent functionaries of the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union became upset and furious having read Fast’s exclusive interview to Harry Schwartz, a newsman working for the New York Times. At this point Fast declared a fullfledged information war on the USSR: he accused the Soviet government of being anti- Semitic, antidemocratic and terroristic. In turn, Moscow launched a campaign to discredit Fast. After 1958, the writer was no longer mentioned in Soviet reviews, correspondence with him ceased, and all working contacts were broken off. In his post-communist period, Fast turned to the autobiographical genre, writing two books: The Naked God and Being Red, where, among other things, he provided insights into his difficult relationships with the representatives of the Soviet literary establishment. Fast’s correspondence with Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art is published in the addendum.

The Attitude Towards the Other in Al-Akkad's Autobiographical Books

The Attitude Towards the Other in Al-Akkad's Autobiographical Books

Pornification as Westernization on the semi-periphery: The history of the Hungarian ‘porn boom’ in the 1990s

The aim of this article is to reconsider ‘pornification’ as a universal concept to describe the mediatized process of proliferation of pornographic images in cultural spaces. Based on a textual and discursive analysis of newspaper clippings from the 1990s, autobiographical books and semi-structured interviews with Hungarian porn industry participants, this article explores the local factors that made Hungary an ideal place for the international porn industry to expand production after 1989. This article contributes to the growing body of literature in Porn Studies, which emphasizes the importance of the industrial nature and global inequalities in porn production. We examine the local discourses that justified the ‘porn boom’ as a sign of westernization and the country’s catching-up to the West and present the key factors in the capitalist reintegration process that led to the expansion of the Hungarian porn industry.

Autobiographical Convergences: A Cultural Analysis of Books by Swedish Digital Media Influencers

Autobiographical ConvergencesA Cultural Analysis of Books by Swedish Digital Media Influencers Gabriella Nilsson (bio) I've always wanted to write a book. I don't know why, though, since my dyslexia makes it difficult for me to even read. It feels completely crazy and very exciting with a book that is just about me. At the same time, it is sad that you can write an entire book about your life when you are only 18 years old. I've already been through so much. Nathalie Danielsson* Swedish digital media influencer Nathalie Danielsson, who daily shares her life narratives with over 2 million online followers, explains why she chose to publish her autobiographical book Jag, Nattid (I, Nattid). This sentiment and the increasing number of Swedish influencers, mostly girls and young women, publishing autobiographies since 2016, revive issues about the meaning of the autobiographical book in a digitized world. Although the rapid development of digital media is said to have shifted scholarly focus from "big life stories—long, retrospectively written accounts—to small stories—fragmented ongoing interactions" (Calzati and Simanowski 24), the autobiographical book still serves an apparent function, even for those who, on a daily basis, share life narratives in the form of "small stories" via digital media. Consequently, there is an opportunity to study the overlapping use of "big" and "small" stories, and in this article, I analyze autobiographical books written by a variety of Swedish digital media influencers. It is a common notion that the advent of web 2.0 has granted girls and young women greater agency (Handyside and Taylor-Jones; Formark et al.). Already in 2006 in Girls Make Media, Mary Celeste Kearney described how girls had forged a space for themselves as culture makers in digital media. In a "reality hungry" media culture, girls were able to harness a range of digital media tools to enact and represent themselves in various ways (16). As boundaries between online and offline [End Page 67] have become harder to discern, so have the boundaries between private and public lives (McNeill and Zuern xiv). In this media culture, the phenomenon of influencer lifeworlds is developing, as girls and young women in particular transform their private life narratives and self-representations into digital businesses through a range of visibility labor and narrative practices on multiple digital platforms (Abidin; Marwick; Raun).1 In these worlds of intertwined life and work, influencers both live and make a living from their life narratives, represented in their own content and in their marketing of various products (so-called "influencer marketing"). Julie Rak thus stresses that as scholars of life narratives become interested in online practices, we need to think about "online life as life, and not as the texts many of us are more used to studying." Life narratives should therefore not only be seen as representations of life, in the sense of finished textual products, but also as enactments of living, as incomplete processes of doing and being ("Life Writing" 156). However, the simultaneous production of autobiographical books and of life narratives online suggests that narratives of both life and living are needed in the life and work of influencers, and that different media may be suitable for different purposes (Poletti). The practice of digital media influencers writing autobiographical books can be seen as an expression of the convergence culture that Henry Jenkins described in 2006, and which seems to be a precondition for the very existence of influencers. In convergence culture, new and old media clash, and content flows between media platforms and competing media industries. If each medium previously had a distinctive market and function, then the media market today, Jenkins argues, has expanded so that the same content moves between platforms and creates synergies. In the cases considered here, the flow is between life narratives in digital media and life narratives in autobiographical books, which are partly the same in terms of content. I also examine the expansion of the influencer marketing industry to include the book market, and vice versa. In autobiography studies, the coaxer is "the person or the institution or the cultural imperatives that solicits or provokes people to tell their stories" (Plummer 21). With...

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Reviewed by: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard Phillip Garland Karl Ove Knausgaard The Morning Star Trans. Martin Aitken. New York. Penguin. 2021. 666 pages. “FIRSTLY THERE WAS no plot, and secondly there was no sequence of events, and no coherence, everything came at you higgledy-piggledy.” So Karl Ove Knausgaard [End Page 64] describes in the fifth volume of My Struggle some of his painstaking efforts to complete his first novel, 1998’s Out of the World. After publishing another novel six years later and then abandoning the form altogether, one can sense in these words Knausgaard’s discomfort with the demands of fiction: plot, character development, readers’ expectations. His response to such constraints was ultimately made manifest in the completion of his massive autobiographical My Struggle series. Since that project’s completion, Knausgaard has written a series of similarly autobiographical books loosely related to the four seasons, collaborated with Fredrik Ekelund to document the 2014 World Cup, and published a remarkable piece of criticism on the work and life of Edvard Munch. These efforts have been marked by an approach largely similar to the one seen in My Struggle: intense self-scrutiny, crystalline imagery, and a proclivity for the spontaneous. The Morning Star, Knausgaard’s long-awaited return to fiction, finds the author operating in a familiar thematic vein by exploring notions of family life, the boundary of death, and the nature of belief and reality, while doing so in a wholly new context: the end of the world. A new star suddenly appears in the Norwegian sky, heralding strange visions, the dead returning to life, and the arrival of an ominous winged creature. These strange events are experienced not by the singular narrator of Knausgaard’s autofiction but instead by a small collection of narrators, which allows Knausgaard to portray how a singular world-changing event can draw out varying shades of human drama, for despite the apocalyptic focus of the novel (which runs a seemingly purposeful 666 pages), its primary concern is what an apocalypse reveals about the inner lives of its characters. Kathrine, a priest, is frightened by the continued reappearance of a man whose funeral she has recently performed; however, it is her realization that she may no longer love her husband, and her response to that realization, that truly haunts her. Likewise, it is Turid who has perhaps the closest encounter with this strange creature, but foremost on her mind throughout the nightmarish events she endures is the well-being of her depressed son. Martin Aitken’s translation retains the evocative language of his earlier contributions that were characterized by starkly beautiful descriptions of nature and the warm realism of domestic life. Throughout The Morning Star, Knausgaard rarely loses sight of the mundane and the personal amidst all the biblical-scale upheaval. One character certainly runs counter to this. Portrayed as both a scholar and a dilettante, Egil is a difficult character to read on account of the considerable number of pages allotted to his story. Is he meant to be taken seriously or is Knausgaard poking fun at himself? It can be hard to know at points. It is his lengthy essay on death that concludes the novel and bears the marks of Knausgaard at his most heady and unrestrained, recalling especially the last volume of My Struggle wherein Knausgaard shifts from his spare, naturalistic, and disciplined persona into the dry and garrulous academic devoting hundreds of pages to an analysis of Paul Celan’s poetry and the life of Adolf Hitler. It made for difficult reading then as Egil’s pages do now, tucked in as they are among characters that not only have far more at stake but are also enlivened by their more proximal exposure to the events of the apocalypse. It is only when Egil turns to his own life and recalls the events of one strange train journey, the most direct and powerful passage in the entire novel, that his value as narrator begins to reveal itself and you understand why Knausgaard chose his voice to be the concluding one of this book, the first of a planned series that should put both the author and...

Graham Serjeant, Sickle Cell, Jamaica and Beyond: A Life, Ian Randle Publishers (Kingston and Miami), 2021

Graham Serjeant, Sickle Cell, Jamaica and Beyond: A Life, Ian Randle Publishers (Kingston and Miami), 2021

Young Adults Rehabilitation Needs and Experiences following Stroke (YARNS): A review of digital accounts to inform the development of age-appropriate support and rehabilitation.

To explore younger adults' experiences of stroke rehabilitation to inform practice, education and future health policy. Qualitative analysis of digital and other media sources on public platforms. Between March and June 2020, the experiences of younger adult stroke survivors aged 18 to 45 at the time of the stroke were collected. Data were gathered from publicly available sources, including social media, and from English-speaking users. In total, 117 accounts from 103 participants were identified from films, autobiographical books, blogs, websites, videos, Twitter and Instagram. Data analysis followed narrative and multimodal analysis with a focus on rehabilitation needs. Younger adult stroke survivors make sense of their experience by reflecting on how stroke has impacted their lives. Accounts reflected an emotional journey between the past self, the present self and evolving self, as well as associated challenges such as the impact on relationships and careers. The majority of accounts presented transitions as problematic, including the receipt of the initial diagnosis, or sometimes misdiagnosis, to returning home and achieving long-term rehabilitation goals. Specialist stroke nurses were considered essential in the rehabilitation process. A complex process of recovery follows stroke for younger adult stroke populations. Challenges to the rehabilitation process need to be better understood and the role of nursing highlighted in future service provision. A series of age-related challenges were highlighted that require attention to improve the care and support offered. This article informs clinicians, educators, and policymakers of the age-related needs of young adult stroke survivors. Focusing on the individual and the development of age-appropriate person-centred stroke care is important. The study highlights the role of stroke nursing and challenges the current policy focus on older stroke populations as well as arguing for greater awareness of age-appropriate stroke rehabilitation in younger adults following stroke.

The challenges and rewards of political memoir writing

I have unexpectedly been invited to share the 'behind the scenes' story of two autobiographical books that I have written concerning aspects of my public and related personal life. I was at first r...

‘The dead dancer’s DDI’: Hervé Guibert, remedy, contaminant, and getting it down

ABSTRACT This essay examines, and associates with the techniques of his North American New Narrative contemporaries, two principal qualities of Hervé Guibert’s last three books of lifewriting that chronicle his final years (1989–1991) with AIDS and its rumored remedies. I study the ways in which Guibert’s autobiographical narrator habitually marks time in each book—particularly the terminal interval of its composition—and frustrates distinction between text and author, whose viability is likewise tracked and measured in HIV latency periods, Tcell drawdown, and eligibility thresholds for experimental drug trials. I contextualize Guibert’s related narrative practice to enact betrayal of friends’ and lovers’ confidences, in a health economy of deceit and favor and double-blind protocols, within the traditions of transgressive literature, which crosses boundaries to enlist reader complicity or rejection in a social—and not merely literary—arena. Guibert’s methods in the autofiction and autobiographical books that share his own hastening terminality and repercussive social potency are consistent, I suggest, with the artistic objective that American New Narrative writer Robert Glück has claimed he sites in Guibert, “to approximate the irreversibility of a performance—something you can’t take back.

Peter Day’s Exploration of Time and Space

Peter Day was one of the most asiduous participants of the NoSIC (Not Strictly Inorganic Chemistry) meetings, where he showed his interest in, and knowledge of, historical, sociological and other non-scientific aspects of the research activities in the institutions led by him as well as in those he visited worldwide, both as a lecturer and as an active participant. This article tries to stress that side of his personality, reflected also in his three autobiographical books, and in his motto “the past is another country”, a quotation from L.P. Hartley.

Normative tensions in filial caring for a mother with dementia: A narrative perspective.

This article aims to gain insight in the normative struggles of adult children caring for their ageing mother living with dementia. Two Dutch autobiographical books written by siblings recording their own caregiving experience were analysed using a narrative design. Children appear to understand their normative concerns through six fields of tension. Our analysis shows that filial caregivers describe two distinct approaches to deal with these normative tensions. One approach aims to preserve the child's pre-existing personal beliefs and values, but also causes the child to demonstrate rigid and uncompromising behaviour at odds with the needs of their parent. The other approach is more reflective and flexible, prioritizing the needs of the vulnerable person over previously held values, providing an opportunity for better care. We conclude that caregiving children have to find their way between being faithful to their principles and showing moral flexibility.

Mental Spaces of Marginalization and Resistance in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings A Discourse-Historical Approach

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) is the first of seven autobiographical books by the American author Maya Angelou. The book recounts Angelou’s childhood and adolescence from age 3 through 16. She narrates her unsettled and traumatic childhood through the themes of intimidation, racism, rape, displacement and family. Her adolescence is narrated through themes of empowerment and resistance. The present study adopts a discourse historical approach (DHA) which is primarily concerned with the integration of the social and political backgrounds of the discursive events. Besides, DHA is highly relevant to discourse studies of inequality and national identity. Its analytical categories reveal the discursive construction of 'self' and 'other' in discourse either positively or negatively (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). The paper incorporates the five discursive strategies with Fauconnier's (1985, 1997) Mental Space Theory (MST) which represents the study's cognitive aspect. Mental spaces help illustrate the speakers reality as opposed to their wishes, attitudes and attributes. The study aims to examine how strategies of marginalization and resistance are discursively represented. It also seeks to demonstrate the effect of those strategies on the construction of Angelou’s identity by revealing their conceptual structure. Finally, the study reveals the power imbalance in relationships by examining the notion of marginalization through which intimidation and racism are discursively represented. Confronting these techniques, the analyses shed light on Angelou’s discourse of resistance.

From Individual to Collective Memories: The Year in Aruba

From Individual to Collective MemoriesThe Year in Aruba Rose Mary Allen (bio) and Jeroen Heuvel (bio) Over time, Aruba,1 one of the six islands in the Dutch Caribbean, has produced several autobiographical books. The latest is by Hyacinthus (better known as Chinto) Thomas Erasmus, Mi memorianan: Aruba di antaño segun Chinto, published in 2019. Erasmus wrote it when he was seventy-five years old ("Chinto Erasmus"), and it was published twenty-one years after his death by the Aruban publishing house Charuba. The publication of Erasmus's autobiography followed an interesting path. Initially, he decided to pen his memories in Papiamento, the local creole language, for his children and grandchildren only. His daughter Etty Eustatia-Erasmus typed out his handwritten notes and shared them with the rest of the family. She was later persuaded by people who promote literature in Papiamento to have the document published. Erasmus was born on the island of Aruba in 1912. His autobiography covers more than 200 pages, in which he chronicles a socially engaged and meaningful life. In the first eighty-eight pages, the writer details the first twelve years of his life. Jeroen Heuvel, who has reviewed the book, finds that "de schrijfstijl is heel beperkt, in de zin van 'en toen en toen en toen', een beetje zoals kinderen van die leeftijd kunnen vertellen" [the narrative style of this part is limited, in the sense of "and then and then and then," similar to how children of that age tend to tell stories]. Heuvel wonders whether Erasmus used this style on purpose to reflect the way a child at that age (younger than twelve) might think. Heuvel goes on to say that the contents of the autobiography indicate a well thought-out story. Erasmus grew up in an era when many Aruban families lived in extreme poverty, with very little cash on hand, and although his family had a piece of land on which they could grow food, in times of drought, the harvest was limited and they had little to eat. As an example of this poverty, Erasmus relates that in 1917, his grandfather's only sheep died. His grandfather lived with them and seems to have had a significant impact in Erasmus's life as the keeper of the family's heritage. In that year, Aruba endured a shortage of maize, the staple food at that time, and other [End Page 9] agricultural products such as cassava and sweet potato would not grow because of the drought. Driven by these dire straits, Erasmus's father joined the large number of men from Aruba (as well as the other islands of the Dutch Caribbean) who went to Cuba to work in the cane fields. The migration from the economically impoverished Aruba to Cuba at the start of the twentieth century has been analyzed extensively by the historian Jorge Pietersz, who corroborates Erasmus's narrative that Arubans migrated mostly when the maize harvest failed because of extreme drought. After a while his father returned to Aruba from Cuba. Erasmus's mother passed away when he was seven, and at age eleven he went to Curaçao as a stowaway to join his father, who had resumed his pattern of migration, now to Curaçao, where the oil refinery established in 1915 offered employment to many foreign workers, including from Aruba and Bonaire. A week later, Erasmus returned to Aruba by boat under the care of Cachi, the vessel's cook. At the age of thirteen, Erasmus stopped going to school in Aruba and started working to help support his family. His father returned to Aruba from Curaçao when the economy of Aruba began to pick up with the establishment of the Lago Oil and Transport Company in 1924. The Erasmus family benefited from the growing Aruban economy, as his father slaughtered pigs and cows for Lago employees. Erasmus's book also provides insight into Aruba's political situation. The twentieth century saw growing opposition in Aruba to the political hegemony of Curaçao, the largest Dutch Caribbean island and the center of Dutch colonial rule. Erasmus was deeply involved with Jan Hendrik (Henny) Eman, the leader of the...

NILAI - NILAI PSIKOLOGI PENDIDIKAN DALAM SEJARAH HIDUP BUYA HAMKA

The presence of a figure always has implications for changes in society. His life journey became a reference and inspiration. One of them is Buya Hamka. Known as a figure who has an authoritative mastery of knowledge in various scientific disciplines. One of them, in the field of educational psychology. The author discusses several of Buya Hamka's autobiographical books which aim to see the philosophical-ethological contribution and its relevance in the field of educational psychology. This research is categorized into qualitative research, the type of research library research, with its epistemological focus point on literature study. The results showed that there are philosophical-epistemological values ??in the study of educational psychology based on Buya Hamka's life journey, such as honesty, intelligence, tenacity, consistency, forgiveness, and egalitarian spirit, which are very functional and relevant to current education.

Biedna, szara myszka” O przełamywaniu społecznego wizerunku ofiary w literackim tryptyku o Halszce Opfer

This article shows the functioning of the social image of the victim and describes a particular attempt to overcome it, based on Halszka Opfer’s autobiographical books and Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska’s reportage. This triptych proves that the adopted perspective determines the reading of the text and how difficult it is to break free from the social, as well as one’s own, framework.

АВТОРСТВО КАК «ДОСТИЖЕНИЕ РАБОЧЕГО ЧЕЛОВЕКА» В АВТОБИОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ КНИГАХ УРАЛЬСКИХ РАБОЧИХ 1930-Х ГОДОВ

The article analyzes the phenomenon of the so called author-worker, who turned to literary creativity and created a fictional autobiography, in which the living conditions of the proletarian before and after the revolution of 1917 were opposed. In the historical and literary context, the author considers, in particular, the role of the UralAPP, which predetermined the creation of the novels "I Love" (1933) by Aleksandr Avdeenko and "My Life" (1936) by Agrippina Korevanova, the story "My School" (1934) by Aleksei Bondin, and memoirs of workers of the Vysokogorsky iron mine “True stories of the mount Vysokaya” (1935). The role of Maksim Gorky in the final editing and publication of these works is noted. In the 1930s, he repeatedly attempted to find the sources for “human rebirth” under the influence of new living conditions. Institutionally, these efforts resulted in the creation of a number of autobiographical books – "historical documents", by Gorky’s definition, the authors of which – the proletarians, exotic for the written culture, demonstrated the emergence of a new Soviet subject. They created texts from which the editors removed most of the traces of the author's lack of culture, lack of mastery of the word, leaving the hero's story about overcoming lack of culture. The autobiographical hero, endowed with the will to culture, emerges from the "darkness", an important part of which is the very proletarian existence. Reading and then writing are portrayed as the main result of the "shock work" of the author and the state, which provided the subject with the opportunity to master a complex form of self-presentation – a detailed fictional autobiography, become a writer and change radically his social status, taking the highest place in the symbolic hierarchy of professions in the same field as the well-known "masters" of written culture.

“Critical” and “Seven Signs of Life”: Two Great Reads From the Frontlines of Intensive Care Medicine

In 2019, 2 UK Intensive Care doctors—Dr Matt Morgan and Dr Aoife Abbey—produced separate, highly worthwhile books on a similar topic. Critical and Seven Signs of Life cover life and death in the intensive care unit (ICU), and specifically what it is like to ply this trade. These reviewers believe that both deserve your valuable time and attention and our commendation. One of your reviewers (P.G.B.) is a 20-year clinical veteran eager to reflect, and the other (J.D.B.) is a science undergraduate eager to learn. Our joint enjoyment suggests that these books have wide appeal and that they are complementary, not duplicative. Both books are relevant for those we care for (namely future patients and trainees; eager to understand the ICU) and for those caring for us (our families and colleagues; eager to understand who they live and work with). There is no shortage of autobiographical books about doctoring. Bestselling doctor-authors include—but are certainly not limited to—Henry Marsh (Do No Harm, 2015, and Admissions, 2017, Picador), Adam Kay (This is Going to Hurt, 2017, Picador), Rachel Clarke (Your Life in My Hands, 2017, John Blake), Atul Gawande (Complications, 2002; Better, 2007; Being Mortal, 2014, Macmillan), and Oliver Sacks (too many to list, Simon and Schuster). It is worth emphasizing that Morgan and Abbey have not just delivered “me-too” books contrived to feed the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite. The market may be crowded, but Morgan (a clinician researcher from Cardiff) and Abbey (a clinician educator from Coventry) have shone a light on areas of the hospital that have been hitherto relatively ignored, namely ICUs. Both also use a relatable, disarming, and humble storytelling style. This is the first book for both, and both are early- to midcareer. Therefore, they might come in for criticism for being too young to be writing what could be classified as memoirs. However, both have oodles of experience writing. Morgan crafts regular opinion pieces for the British Medical Journal (https://drmattmorgan.com) and Abbey blogged as the British Medical Association’s “secret doctor” (https://www.bma.org.uk/news/secret-doctor-blog). Just like their previous online writing, these books are neither textbook nor novel, but a mix of description, reflection, education, and popular science. Critical by Dr Matt Morgan encompasses 9 chapters and 320 pages. Each chapter includes 1 or more patient stories in order to highlight a body system. Chapter 1 focuses on the respiratory system via Vivian, a polio sufferer and the first mechanically ventilated ICU patient. Chapter 2 focuses on the immune system, chapter 3, on skin and bones, so on and so forth. Each chapter includes a pertinent explanation of medical practice or biology. For example, Chapter 4, “The Heart,” teaches readers how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Whether Morgan’s stories end in recovery, death, or disability, readers have the opportunity to better understand the why, what, and how of each treatment. They might also understand when, why, and how it gets stopped. Critical also helps explain why intensive care matters. It could even stimulate more informed dialogue among health care workers, policy makers, and the public. Seven Signs of Life also delivers approximately 288 pages of stories from the frontlines of contemporary ICU. It also centers around patients and covers the 4 Ws: what, when, why, and why not. The difference is that Abbey subdivides by emotion, not biology. She deploys 7 feelings—fear, grief, joy, distraction, anger, disgust, and hope—to create 7 chapters from what she cleverly calls the “seven signs of life.” Abbey is equally skilled at explaining complex medicine simply and is refreshingly candid. Her book should also leave readers with a better understanding, not only of medicine but also of the thoughts and feelings of doctors. These are often hidden from patients. Memoirs can feel indulgent but, in our opinion, Abbey gets the balance right between explanation and confession. Medical autobiographies could easily slip into a lazy narrative of hero doctor and helpless patient. In contrast, Morgan and Abbey readily admit their imperfections and vulnerabilities. No book will be perfect for all, and some readers may want more science and less sentiment. Perhaps not every clinician will want to invest precious downtime reading more materia medica, and some may want to hear more from patients, less from providers, and stories from all parts of the globe. Regardless, we believe these 2 books were worth our time, our funds, and our bandwidth. Moreover, while there is a trend toward discussing complex issues via brief tweets, we remain fans of long form narrative. We thank these 2 talented author-clinician-scientists for humanizing the ICU. Peter G. Brindley, MD, FRCPCDepartments of Critical Care Medicine and Anesthesiology and Pain MedicineDossetor Ethics CentreUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, Alberta, Canada[email protected] Jack D. Brindley, BScDepartment of NeurosciencesUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, Alberta, Canada

A Mind Trying to Right/Write Itself: Metaphors in Madness Narratives

This article explores autobiographical madness narratives written by people with lived experience of psychosis, dated from the mid-19th century until the 1970s. The focus of the exploration is on the metaphors used in these narratives in order to communicate how the writers experienced and understood madness from within. Different metaphors of madness, such as going out of one’s mind, madness as an inner beast, another world, or a transformative journey are presented based on several autobiographical books. It is argued that these metaphors often represent madness as the negative picture of what it is to be human, while the narrative writing itself helps to restore a sense of belonging and personhood. The value and function of metaphors in illness and madness narratives is further discussed.