The Lioness in Winter - Writing an Old Woman`s Life

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-15184-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 376 g

When she started working with the aged more than forty years ago, Ann Burack-Weiss began storing the knowledge and skills she thought would help when she got old herself. It was not until she hit her mid-seventies that she realized she had packed sneakers to climb Mount Everest, not anticipating the crevices and chasms that constitute the rocky terrain of old age. The professional gerontological and social work literature offered little help, so she turned to the late-life works of beloved women authors who had bravely climbed the mountain and sent back news from the summit. Maya Angelou, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, M. F. K. Fisher, Doris Lessing, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton, and Florida Scott-Maxwell were among the many guides she turned to for inspiration.

In The Lioness in Winter, Burack-Weiss blends an analysis of key writings from these and other famed women authors with her own wisdom to create an essential companion for older women and those who care for them. She fearlessly examines issues such as living with loss, finding comfort and joy in unexpected places, and facing disability and death. This book is filled with powerful passages from women who turned their experiences of aging into art, and Burack-Weiss ties their words to her own struggles and epiphanies, framing their collective observations with key insights from social work practice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burack-Weiss, Ann

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Aging, I Wrote1. Who Is That Old Woman?2. What She Thinks About Some Times, Some Days, About Some Things3. I Had Looked at Myself in the Full-Length Mirror4. How We Are with Each Other5. But Who Were They?6. There Is a Grace in Death, There Is Life7. My Map of a Place8. Interested in Big Things and Happy in Small Ways9. Just Show Up10. Fierce with RealityConclusion: Aging, I WriteAfterword: Bright as Stars in the Heaven of My MindAnnotated ReadingsReferences

Über Autor(innen)

Ann Burack-Weiss is a social work practitioner, educator, and consultant who taught two generations of students at the Columbia School of Social Work and is now an associate faculty member in Columbia's Program of Narrative Medicine. She is also the author of The Caregiver's Tale: Loss and Renewal in Memoirs of Family Life.