The Invading Body: Reading Illness Autobiographies PDF
Preview The Invading Body: Reading Illness Autobiographies
THE INVADING BODY THE INVADING BODY Reading Illness Autobiographies El NAT AVRAHAMI University of Virginia Press Charlottesville and London University of Virginia Press © 2007 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper First published 2007 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG ING-IN - PU BLICATION DATA Avrahami, Einat, 1963— The invading body: reading illness autobiographies / Einat Avrahami. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8139-2664-3 (cloth: alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8139-2665-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Terminally ill—Psychology. 2. Terminally ill—Biography. 3. Critically ill—Psychology. 4. Critically ill—Biography. I. Title. R726.8.A97 2007 6io.73'6—dc22 2007010403 FOR TOMER, WITH LOVE CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: How the “I” Handles Finiteness 1 1 Illness as Life Affair in GillianR ose’s Love's Work 21 2 First You Hurt 40 3 Confessing AIDS 73 4 Flesh-Tinted Frames 97 5 Hannah Wilke: Performing Grief 129 Conclusion 157 Notes 165 Works Cited 179 Index 189 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been carried out without the unwavering sup port of my husband, Tomer Ben Efraim, who helped me in multiple ways, ranging from hunting for illness photographs in downtown Manhattan galleries and looking up reviews of illness memoirs, to taking care of our two children on numerous school vacations and boosting my confidence in moments of despair. I was fortunate to have wise and attentive readers during all the stages of writing this book and to engage in conversa tions that helped me improve the manuscript. I am very grateful to Ellen Spolsky for her illuminating and sensitive guidance during my early stages of thinking and writing at the University of Bar-Ilan. Special thanks are due to Elana Gomel, Shlomit Rimmon-Kenan, Rachel Salmon, Mil- lette Shamir, and Hana Wirth-Nesher—as well as to the two readers for the University of Virginia Press, one anonymous and the other Ross Cham bers—for their generous and perceptive comments on the manuscript. An honorary salute goes to Irma Klein and Edna Rosenthal for their en couragement along the way. I thank Cathie Brettschneider, my editor at the University of Virginia Press, and Beth Ina, freelance copyeditor, for their support and conscientiousness. I’m indebted to James Phelan and Rita Charon for publishing chapters 1 and 3, respectively, in Narrative and Literature and Medicine, and for the permission to reprint. Gracious permissions to reproduce photographic images, as well as much-needed
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