Jodi Picoult Research Articles

“Imagine what it would be like to have a brand-new heart”: Biosentimentality and embodied-relationality in Change of Heart: A Novel

This paper discusses Jodi Picoult’s Change of Heart: A Novel in order to foreground how the received heart triggers anxiety and the narrative crisis in the heart recipient who develops an ambiguous...

Conflict characters of daughter against Her parentsas seen in jodipicoult’s My sister’s keeper

The thesis discusses about novel my sister’s keeper written by Jodi picoult. This novel describes the relationship between a family that has a complicated problem between the child and the mother. Problems that occur in the family is caused by the favoritism of parents to their children and one of the family members suffered severe disease in this novel.

The “Ulysses” Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit

The “Ulysses” Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit

On Hope and Hard Choices

ABSTRACTIn Handle with Care (2009), novelist Jodi Picoult presents a heartbreaking case involving the question of wrongful birth. This essay examines Ronald M. Green's writings in the field of bioethics to see what wisdom they might bring to this case. I argue that Green's contributions to bioethics exemplify some of the best of ethical argumentation: attention to facts, discernment of morally relevant differences, enunciation and justification of principles, originality, and compassion. I then draw from his work three foci that illuminate aspects of the dilemma presented by Picoult: the importance of parental love, the possibility that the dilemma might be reframed away from wrongful birth, and the need to shift our focus to questions of justice. While appreciating Green's contributions to bioethics, I also indicate several places of nuanced disagreement.

Narrative in Medicine and History: how fiction reminds us of who we are

Reading enhances our imagination, our narrating and listening skills, our capacity to deal with time and space, thus enlightening our ethical self-awareness as human beings. The key to know how to deal with theoretical principles and practical cases lies in hermeneutics, since a demanding ethical position requires a demanding hermeneutical procedure. Based on the novel The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult, this essay aims at stressing the role of literary narratives in the field of Bioethics if one wants to focus on the right questions instead of searching for the one correct answer. The reading of this novel reminds us of the importance of telling one’s story in order to perceive our own identity, in order to deal with the pain of remembering and so that we may be able to forgive and to promise. The Storyteller , a story built of storie s by different voices, focuses our attention on the work of memory and narrative, reminding us of the thought provoking book by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition , and allowing us to bring in Paul Ricouer’s theory of the identity in Soi-Meme comme un Autre , as well as The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank.The intersubjective dimension of therapeuticrelationships and the relevance of narrative knowledge in health care recognized by Narrative Medicine demand from the health professionals the development of the skills of a storyteller and those of a story listener/reader. Reading The Storyteller makes us face the pillars of Narrative Medicine without focusing on health issues, by making us instead read about storytellers while we are asked to be story-listeners and story-builders.

Lies We Tell Sick Children: Mutual Pretense and Uninformed Consent in Cancer Narratives

Lies We Tell Sick Children:Mutual Pretense and Uninformed Consent in Cancer Narratives Susan E. Honeyman (bio) In “A Person’s a Person: Children’s Rights in Children’s Literature,” Jonathan Todres and Sarah Higinbotham write that “children’s literature [has] been ignored as a rights-bearing discourse” yet “literature is a source of law for children” (1). In this spirit I propose reading children’s books about cancer as potential rights-bearing, or rights-suppressive, discourses, through the lens of anthropological findings about actual children facing potentially terminal illness. Myra Bluebond-Langner, in her 1978 study of children with leukemia, The Private Worlds of Dying Children, depicted a range of denial, deceit and rare honesty she witnessed and rigorously collected, most frequently demonstrating “mutual pretense,” an unspoken consensus in which “each party defines the patient as dying but acts otherwise,” resulting in hopeful expression only (199). Rather than encouraging child patients, such denial further burdens them with keeping up a masquerade while denying their need for “open awareness,” which would allow freely discussing concerns, questions, and fears (220–21). High-profile cases from news media suggest that this trend is on-going in spite of positive developments codifying child medical rights, demonstrating how mutual pretense infringes on the right to informed consent. Adults often actively withhold the truth from dying child patients, denying their rights to medical honesty, awareness, and agency. I will demonstrate how pervasively popular American adult narratives for children about cancer mirror the same relation—most often modeling “mutual pretense” rather than “open awareness” by either depicting dishonesty towards the dying in their representations without critique or by directly lying to the reader, thus perpetuating a rights-suppressive discourse. The few exceptions that critique mutual pretense help to highlight the dominant practice but also [End Page 179] suggest that through more recent and mature narratives about cancer, open awareness (and thus implicitly, informed consent) is encouraged. Considered within the ethical parameters of child medical rights, texts as diverse in ethnic and historical contexts as Eleanor Coerr’s Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (1977), Virginia Hamilton’s Bluish (1999), Cynthia Kadohata’s Kira-Kira (2004), and David Small’s Stitches (2009) depict and sometimes perform the same denial and dishonesty, demonstrating the pervasiveness of a protectionism that in fact impinges upon children’s participatory rights to full knowledge and self-determination of their bodies. Ultimately cancer narratives tend to protect parents during their emotional struggle to support children rather than respecting young patients and readers by acknowledging their right to be informed and participate as knowing medical subjects. The pretense of “getting better” and “thinking positively,” though sensible in the abstract, simply imposes a greater emotional and social burden on a suffering child. Children’s literature should instead foster open awareness, which the characters in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper (2004) and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (2012) argue for consistently while foregrounding how difficult it is to achieve. Mutual Pretense in “Cancer Books” for Kids In John Green’s 2012 novel, The Fault in Our Stars, narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year-old with thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs, describes her favorite book: “it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck” (48). The main character of her favorite novel has cancer, but “Anna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is” (49). Throughout The Fault in Our Stars, Green reminds his readers that dishonesty pervades popular discourse surrounding young people with life-threatening illness, and his novel invites us to consider not only how deceptive cancer books for young people can be, but also how dishonesty about terminal disease can dominate family dynamics, hospital conversations, even social media and public ritual. Green clearly positions his own novel against a traditional formula of sentimental denial—a formula so well known that Saturday Night Live did an off-color but on-point parody trailer of the film adaptation called The Fault in Our Stars 2: The Ebola in Our Everything, clearly referencing the formula even more than Green’s novel. The schmaltzy mess made of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister...

Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper: New Definitions of Human Dignity in Novel and Film

AbstractMy starting point is that bioethics and the problems connected to human rights and human dignity are the logical evolution of the principles of equity. My paper aims at analysing Jodi Picoult’s novel

The Convergence of Sacred and Secular Spaces in Three Selected Contemporary Novels

SummaryThis article focuses on the return and revitalisation of traditional Christian themes, such as sacrifice, guilt, sin and redemption, and the manifestation of supernatural phenomena, such as visions, faith healing and stigmata in three selected contemporary postmodern novels (Atonement by Ian McEwan, Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult and Mariëtte in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen). It offers an examination of how these themes materialise in novels written by certain writers who are not explicitly religious, or in novels which do not have an overtly religious focus. There is a co- existence of belief and unbelief, or religion and science in all the novels under discussion. The theories of Jean François Lyotard and specifically his notion of “incredulity towards metanarratives” as well as his notion that narrative and scientific knowledge are both subject to legitimisation are relevant to this article. Gianteresio Vattimo's ideas on the role of religion in contemporary life and the possible convergences of postmodernity and the Christian faith also come into play. He advocates weak thought as opposed to strong thought and sees caritas as essential in a postmodern society. Readers find themselves either on the side of the believing or unbelieving camp in the novels discussed. However, many readers may hover in the liminal space between belief and unbelief. Interpretation depends on many factors that constitute the world view of the readers.

THE CONFLICTS FACED BY SARA FITZGERALD AS SEEN IN JODY PICOULT’S NOVEL MY SISTER’S KEEPER

The main objective of this study is to investigate conflicts that Sara Fitzgerald has to undergo as depicted in a bestselling novel entitled My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. This study also aims to see how the conflicts develop.This study uses objective approach to help find the conflicts of Sara Fitzgerald and how her conflicts develop by applying the theory of internal and external conflict also the theory of frustration. The primary data used is the novel itself. The secondary data are the books related to the theory of conflict and articles from the internet.The result of the study shows that there are four main problems that lead Sara Fitzgerald into conflicts. The problems are Sara having a baby, Jesse and Anna feeling neglected, the trial and Anna’s death. The analysis shows that Sara decides to make important decisions for Kate’s life. Sara faces many failures because of her decisions and it leads her to face more problems and creates new obstacles, one of which is Anger; this act of frustration always appears as the manifestation of her actions.

Disability on Trial

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult draws upon extreme, emotional human drama to craft sentimental, even melodramatic plotlines that almost always revolve around a courtroom trial. Often inspired by true stories, her topics explore complex ethical questions around dying, abandonment, abuse, high school shootings, and not surprisingly, illness and disability. The article considers three of Picoult's novels, My Sister's Keeper (2004), Handle with Care (2009), and House Rules (2010), to contrast the author's realistic depictions of familial and individual experiences of disability with the melodramatic frames girding these stories. Drawing upon recent work in disability studies scholarship, the suggestion is that Picoult at times pushes the boundaries of disability representation beyond the traditional binaries of medical versus social, toward a "rhizomatic model" of disability. Simultaneously, however, these popular novels resolidify the "problem" of disability as personal and familial, and reflect a deep cultural ambivalence—between a growing awareness and understanding of disability rights, from one perspective, and a haunting fear which illness and disability continue to evoke in an ableist culture.

To Be or Not to Be My Sister's Keeper?

The sole person who should be allowed to make that choice is the very one who lies at the heart of the issue. 1 1 Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper 409 (2004). This book was later turned into a majo...

Searching for Otherness: The View of a Novel

The ethical issues concerning the use of PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) to select embryos of a particular HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) type are numerous. They arise from the potentially conflicting interests between those of the pre-existing child, the subject of a treatment which may be curative, and those of the sibling to be created, who cannot give consent to the donation, together with the problem of the destruction of potentially healthy embryos. This essay focuses on the web of vulnerabilities affecting the parents, the sick child and the "saviour sibling," while addressing three areas: science, bioethics and literature. The novel My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, provides the reader with an in-depth view of the conflicting interests and emotional problems that affect the Fitzgeralds, a family experiencing the pain of seeing one of their children dying while facing the tragic consequences of trying to save this child by having another offspring.

Middlebrow Medical Ethics

If you travel through airports, you can't help but notice it. Jodi Picoult's novels are everywhere. From Charlotte to Kansas City to Los Angeles, airport bookstores are consistently stocked with three or four or more of her most recent heavy volumes of fiction. Read one and you might mutter that it seems designed for a relatively mindless flight from one coast to the other. Read several and you might agree with National Public Radio's disparaging view that the books are lurid tales of family strife ... garnished heavily with medical jargon, legalese, and a punitive finger pointed at a mother. It's not hard to find negative comments about Picoult's novels. Janet Maslin, writing for the New York Times, refers to them as tear-jerker(s) on authorial autopilot, long-winded, perfunctory, and vapid. One blogger echoes others in declaring that reading a Picoult novel is like watching a train wreck: painful, but interesting to watch. Even so, her books are perennial bestsellers, right up there with those of Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark. Published in more than forty languages, her last six books have sold more than five million copies in the United States alone. At age forty-two, she's written sixteen novels, continuing a steady pace of writing one a year. Many readers opine that Picoult couldn't have broken a sweat writing her most recent book, House Rules. Clearly, Picoult has found a formula that works. Tragedy sparks a family drama. The chapters are narrated through separate viewpoints, each with a font change to distinguish between the different voices of characters. The characters themselves are somewhat admirable, somewhat despicable. In the end, they always suffer an alarming plot twist. Contrived and emotionally manipulative, the stories nevertheless connect effectively with readers. Picoult's prickly topics have been plucked right from current headlines and talk shows: transplant ethics, stem cell research, teen suicide, genetic disease, incest, euthanasia, and abandonment. Subplots meant to reverberate with the main themes of identity, regret, hope, and moral choice weave into the main narrative through intrusive flashbacks and disconnected digressions. Her books could be substantially improved by cutting half their length. At her best, Picoult writes about the imperiled children of flawed middle-class parents. As if it is not enough that these children are saddled with parents who both care for them deeply and fail them miserably, the children are also inevitably afflicted with a chronic or genetic disease from which they cannot be rescued. Faced with tragic choices, the mothers, in particular, unerringly make the wrong choice and create a new, worse tragedy for the child and the entire family. No single horror is sufficient. Perhaps it is no coincidence that these books sell best in airports, to people who probably worry about whether they are spending enough time with their children. Although her stories are imbued with an almost frenzied worry about children, taking care of these vulnerable victims seems to be more than ordinary parents can handle. All that said, Picoult's plots manage to raise philosophic questions about serious bioethical issues and moral choices. In My Sister's Keeper, published in 2004, Anna Fitzgerald was conceived out of her parents' desperation to have a perfect genetic match to keep alive her leukemia-afflicted sister, Kate. From infancy, Anna has donated compatible fluids and body parts to her sibling. Now thirteen, Anna resists giving up a kidney when Kate needs one. When Anna sues for medical emancipation so that she--not her mother--can make decisions about her body, the family begins to unravel. Anger, hope, and despair alternate throughout the novel's pages. Is it right to use one child as the means to save another? What should be the limits to a parent's rights over decisions about a child's body? Handle with Care, published in 2009, delivers another family in turmoil over decisions about a child's illness. …

Handle With Careby Jodi Picoult; New York, Atria Books, 2009, 496 pages, $27.95 hardcover, $16 softcover

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessHandle With CareSusan E. Bailey M.D.Susan E. Bailey M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2009.60.12.1693AboutSectionsView articleView PDFView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View article Jodi Picoult's Handle With Care is a harrowing novel, its action moving ever more swiftly and relentlessly toward what the reader early on intuits will be disaster. It is also beautifully written, riveting in its creation of an unresolvable conflict not just within the main character, but between her and everyone else she loves, including her younger daughter, Willow, a child born with a spontaneous mutation leading to type III osteogenesis imperfecta (OI). In a bid to win the money that would make Willow's life easier, Charlotte files a "wrongful birth" lawsuit against her obstetrician—who is also her best friend. The lawsuit destroys the friendship and imperils every other meaningful relationship that Charlotte has. Picoult's books routinely achieve the New York Times' bestseller list, and this one demonstrates why: she is a master of metaphor. Picoult intermittently leavens the narrative with pastry-chef Charlotte's recipes and reflections on the techniques of baking—tempering, folding, "blind-baking," the use of interfering agents—linking each technique or pastry product to the action of the novel. To read Handle With Care is to learn a lot about OI, something about pastry making, and much about ordinary human mistake and heartbreak. Most maddening and saddening for the reader is Charlotte's blind insistence that five-and-a-half-year-old Willow will understand that Charlotte is lying when she implies that yes, she would have aborted her daughter had her obstetrician recognized the importance of the startlingly clear ultrasound of Willow's calvarium at 18 weeks. Picoult's plot moves forward with dizzying speed under the impetus of Charlotte's stubbornness, and as the trial begins and rushes toward settlement, things spin more and more out of control—Willow attempts suicide, the obstetrician and Charlotte's husband share a furtive kiss, the obstetrician's orthodontist husband helps diagnose and bring to Charlotte's attention the cutting and bulimia of her older daughter, Amanda. And Amanda, it turns out, is a masterful ice-skater, but her own life has been so overshadowed by Willow's needs that the reader is surprised to learn this fact. Nevertheless, it fits: just as children with OI are always at risk of another bone break, the ice-skating imagery drives home the message throughout Picoult's novel of skating on thin ice. The ending of the novel was a complete and utter surprise to me. Other than to say it also fits, I won't say more but will simply recommend Handle With Care as something to read with care, when not feeling fragile. The reviewer reports no competing interests.Dr. Bailey is director of assertive community treatment in the Community Psychiatry Program, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 60Issue 12 December, 2009Pages 1693-1693PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2009 Volume 60 Number 12 Metrics History Published online 1 December 2009 Published in print 1 December 2009

Communication Ethics and My Sister's Keeper

Objectives: To identify ethical dilemmas in communication presented in My Sister's Keeper, a novel by Jodi Picoult. To examine how one's position/perspective shapes how one interprets and evaluates situations. To analyze ethical decision making. Relevant Courses: We have developed this activity for use in Communication Ethics; however, it could be employed in several courses like family, health, and interpersonal communication

Nelly's Version

Nelly's Version