Shame and the Aging Woman

J. Brooks Bouson is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, USA. She has published nine books, including Embodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings; Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison; Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother; and Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.

• Preface.- Chapter 1: Aging Women and the Age Mystique: Age Anxiety and Body Shame in the Contemporary Culture of Appearances.- Chapter 2: The Mask of Aging and the Social Devaluation andSexual Humiliation of the Aging and Old Woman.- Chapter 3: Facing the Stranger in the Mirror in Illness, Disability,and Physical Decline.- Chapter 4: Confronting and Resisting an Unlivable Age Culture.