Diary of a detour
Stern, Lesley2020
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"DIARY OF A DETOUR is film and cultural studies scholar Lesley Stern's memoir of living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CCL), a form of incurable cancer. When diagnosed in 2008, Stern began writing short blog posts about her treatment to keep friends updated about her health. Over time, the topics of these posts began to expand, and it is this sense of expansion and spreading-of detouring-that this book explores. The underlying argument of this work is that illness can produce, as Stern writes, "unexpected detours, experiences of materiality, and obsessions." For Stern, obsession takes hold in the form of four chickens purchased soon after her diagnosis-Holly, Luna Mae, Sabrina, and Funny Face-who Stern claims, in the very first chapter, "saved my life." Rather than refusals or elisions, Stern would like us to see these detours and obsessions as a way of producing new ideas about what it might mean to live and think with cancer, and chronic illness more broadly, in ways that are not limited to medical terms. Revised and collected in book form, the essays in DIARY OF A DETOUR span a ten-year period-from 2008 to 2018- and melds together both creative and critical reflections on living with a chronic, and incurable, illness. The book is structured as eighty-three short chapters, each no more than three to five pages in length. Although the central thread of the book is Stern's ongoing experience of living with a chronic illness, the topics of individual chapters cover a wide range of material"--
Main title:
Diary of a detour / Lesley Stern ; with illustrations by Amy Adler.
Author:
Stern, Lesley, authorAdler, Amy, illustrator
Imprint:
Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.copyright2020.
Collation:
x, 361 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Series title:
Notes:
Includes index.
Linking notes:
Online version Stern, Lesley. Diary of a detour. Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.
Contents:
Chickens saved my life -- The time it takes (by way of an introduction) -- Secret -- A possum fate (averted) -- Events unfold in the snow -- Chicken feet -- Why chickens or homage to Gloria -- Boomerang -- A way of making another egg -- Shivers and shakes -- The chicken or the egg -- Strawberry/fetish -- Life after life -- The poetry of pigs -- Some musings on metaphor -- Tricking the body -- Chicken joke -- Nice paint job -- Frenzied calm -- Tokhm-e morgh -- Disability -- Why me Lord?
ISBN:
9781478009672 (paperback)
Dewey class:
791.436561092B791.43
LC class:
PR9619.3.S796
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
564677