COMM 321 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Barbara Barrie, Colorectal Cancer, Reynolds Price
Document Summary
People are writing more autobiographies and narratives about their experience of illness. Pathographies articulate the hopes, fears, and anxieties that are common to sickness. Also guidebooks to the illness itself and the medical experience. They are also helpful to the physician to understand the patients more. There are around 60 pathographies on breast cancer alone that speak about common procedures, to alternative treatments such as psychic healing. Prostate cancer and psychiatric disorder pathographies are on the increase. Reynolds price focuses more on paralysis rather than the tumor. Barbara barrie focuses on how she leads a productive life despite having colorectal cancer. Neurological diseases such as parkinson"s and epilepsy are common topics as well. Autobiographies and biographies about death are becoming more popular. For the most part, authors of these are a heterogeneous group: movie star, hairdressers, housewives, ministers, journalists, athletes, truck drivers and college teachers; most are middle class. Religion is involved in many of these pathographies.
