Narrative Art and the Politics of Health

Neil Brooks is Chair of the Department of English and Cultural studies at Huron University College, London, Ontario, Canada.Sarah Blanchette is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.

• List of Figures; Acknowledgments; Notes on Contributors; Introduction, Neil Brooks and Sarah Blanchette; PART I. INSTITUTIONAL NARRATIVES; Chapter 1. The Laboring Body and the Slave Trade: An Enduring Narrative of Health and Illness, Mitchell Gauvin; Chapter 2. Projecting Eugenics and Performing Knowledges, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Carla Rice; Chapter 3. Grief Supremacy: On Grievability, Whiteness and Not Being #allinthistogether, Jennifer Poole and Carmen Galvan; Chapter 4. Creating Categories, Eli Clare; PART II. SOCIOCULTURAL NARRATIVES; Chapter 5. Mothers Who Know Best: Narratives of Motherhood and Epistemological Anxieties in Vaccine Hesitancy Discourse, Jessica Polzer and Pamela Wakewich; Chapter 6. The Cultural Production of Commodifying Under Resourced Bodies, Aaron Martin, Clarisa Barrera Garza, Mubashar Khan and Lauren McKenzie; Chapter 7. When Progressivism Goes Mad: Spiritualism and the Euthanization of the Spiritually Unfit, Dan Graham; Chapter 8. American and Taiwanese Conceptions of Suicide in Emily X. R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After, Gracie Marsden; PART III. FICTIONAL NARRATIVES; Chapter 9. Sadness, Madness and Vigor in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s The Chinaberry Tree, Patricia A. Milanes; Chapter 10. Death, Cruelty and Magical Humanism in the Fiction of Terry Pratchett, Christopher Lockett; Chapter 11. Mental Illness and Radical Caregiving in Sepia Leaves and Em and the Big Hoom, Amala Poli; Chapter 12. Cast-off Casts: The Orthopedic Imagination in Dear Evan Hansen and Lady Bird, Matthew Tomkinson; Index.

“This timely book collects a diverse set of essays that examine the stories we tell about our own and others’ health. The collection sparkles with intellectual curiosity and critique, illuminating myriad ways we have been shaped by cultural narratives about health and well-being.” — Joel Rodgers, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Toronto Scarborough