I was first a clinical social worker and then a social work professor with research focus on older adults. Over the past few years, as I have been writing my own memoir about caring for my parents, I’ve been drawn to memoirs and first-person stories of aging, illness, and death. The best memoirs on these topics describe the emotional transformation in the writer as they process their loss of control, loss of their own or a loved one’s health, and their fear, pain, and suffering. In sharing these stories, we help others empathize with what we’ve gone through and help others be better prepared for similar events in their own lives.
Michelle Zauner’s writing is rich with detail, especially descriptions of Korean foods and visits to relatives in Korea that blossom with imagery, scents, and sounds. Against the backdrop of those vivid childhood scenes and the food shopping and eating scenes, the story remained vivid as her mother succumbs to cancer.
Two themes struck me throughout the book: Michelle’s father is Caucasian American, her mother is a Korean immigrant, and M. struggles to find her place in either culture. Her youthful rebellion against her mother’s over-protectiveness and very Korean-ness becomes painful to face as her mother is sick and dying.
I was deeply moved as Michelle came to accept her mother, forgive herself, and embrace the family and culture her mother had given her.
The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.
'As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't' - Marie-Claire
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer,…
This book attracted me because, as a gerontologist/social worker, I’m interested in the subject of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. This book, rather than describing the long, sad decline of a loved one, tells Bloom’s story of trying to help her spouse with AD to end his life.
Bloom is a clinical social worker who writes with a deep understanding of human behavior and motivation, most notably her own, which makes her a fine memoirist. She writes candidly about her emotions, unafraid to reveal less flattering details.
Her story is a sad one, with many ups and downs, but the overwhelming sense I got was of her powerful love for her husband and desire to give him what he needed in the face of his dementia diagnosis.
A poignant love letter to Bloom's husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.
In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge 'into the darkness of an expiring existence'.
I was absolutely blown away by the late Paul Kalanithi’s memoir about his life and cancer struggle because of his beautiful writing and the philosophical thinking behind that writing. The author reviews and comes to terms with his life’s meaning and value for himself and, ultimately, for the reader.
So many parts of this book made me ponder my life’s meaning and worth and how I would have dealt with what Kalanithi was going through. As a physician, he relates his situation to the inherent vulnerability of the human form and the shortcomings of modern medicine. This makes his story so moving, as he is denied blissful ignorance.
I love that this tragic story of a life cut short contains humor, beauty, and Kalanithi’s final satisfaction with the life he lived.
'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and…
When I read this memoir by Suleika Jaouad soon after its release, I couldn’t put it down. Another illness memoir that is also a coming-of-age story, here the author must navigate her love life and budding career amid horrendous cancer symptoms and treatments over several years.
It’s a gripping story as she slowly realizes and must adapt to the fact that life will never be the same for her. She is destined to live “between two kingdoms” – the living and the dead – in the realm of the sick.
I was drawn in by her experiences, her humor, and her literate references to history, literature, and culture. I’m a huge fan of Suleika, and I recently reread this memoir to remind myself of her wise and beautiful writing.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New…
This graphic memoir by Roz Chast is one of my favorite books of all time. I completely relate to the story, which focuses on Chast’s relationship with her parents as they age and become less capable of managing independently.
The book depicts her repeated efforts to coax her parents to face the reality of their aging and failing health as she gradually does more and more to help them, a situation I’m very familiar with and wrote about in my recent memoir. As an only child (like me), she must deal with every crisis and decision.
Her drawings add humor and emphasis to the story, but the prose alone vividly portrays her frustrations and heartbreak as Chast faces complication after complication and loss after loss in her parents’ final few years.
#1 New York Times Bestseller 2014 National Book Award Finalist Winner of the inaugural 2014 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the 2014 Books for a Better Life Award Winner of the 2015 Reuben Award from National Cartoonists Society
In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort…
My book is a frank, humorous, and poignant exploration of aging in an aging expert's family. I was the only daughter of colorful and talented parents: my mother, an English scholar and poet, and my father, a pianist music professor. Their dramatic emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for my 1960s and ‘70s youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorced, my newly single father and my mother, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, reconciled and decided to live together again. Now a gerontological social worker and professor, I step in to become their care manager, but find it's not easy. Old family dynamics and disappointing limitations to available services for older adults make for heavy burdens as I try to help my parents maintain their unique talents and humanity.
My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.
It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to the family's country manor house, where Mattie isolates and old ghosts start to come out of the woodwork.
It's a story about loss and depression; it's a story about friends who don't let you walk through the valley of death alone.
Ambrose Bancroft returns to London society with his younger sister, hoping they'll leave ghosts of memory behind. They have only each other left. While Ambrose attempts to draw Mattie out, dragging her to balls and threatening to seek suitors for her, his sister recoils from his meddling. Finally, when Ambrose compels her to attend art class before she's ready, Mattie paints something horrific enough to banish them from society in public disgrace.
At Linwood Manor, Mattie and Ambrose aren't as alone as they think. Taking advantage of Mattie's desperate need to find freedom, a vanishing room lures Ambrose's sister into…
