Over dinner recently, my husband asked me if I was still writing blog posts. I replied, “No, not really.” When he asked me why not, I recounted how I had started writing this Medical Margins blog back in 2010 as I was processing my elderly father’s final illness and the insanity of the US healthcare system, especially related to end-of-life care. In my blog, I then moved on to trying to rekindle a passion for the rather problematic (to me) profession of nursing. Then, I became interested in the health humanities and the somewhat insular academic world of narrative medicine. And, always, homelessness. Fast-forward to today, and my writing time and energies go towards writing books on homelessness and health.
I am a part-time, nine-month employee and professor. I live for my summers off now when I have uninterrupted time to write and be a grandmother. This past summer, I made good writing progress on my next book, tentatively titled Way Home, about the contemporary landscape of homelessness in Seattle and King County. Refining and tightening my storytelling approach to writing (with terrific assistance from an editor), I edit out passages I might love but which do not pass the “So what?” test. I keep these darlings in a Word file titled “Extra.”
COVID caught up with me this summer, along with a bad bout of COVID rebound, and yet I pushed myself to continue writing. Some of these fever-induced passages ended up in the “Extra” file. Here is one I like, although it most likely will not make it into the final book manuscript. The photograph, however, likely will.
Consider the shopping cart. Constructed of wire and plastic and supported by four wheels, the cart’s purpose is to carry store merchandise before and after purchase. The shopping cart, developed during the Great Depression by an American man for use in grocery stores by housewives, becoming super-sized and non-gendered, an exquisite symbol of capitalism. The shopping cart, appropriated by people experiencing homelessness, serving as container and conveyance for their remaining belongings, a somber symbol of the fallout from late capitalism.
Dear Josephine,
It’s nice to see your blog again, and I’m glad you’re recovering from Covid. In March/April I had the wonderful experience of teaching in Columbia’s narrative medicine program, so reading your post, I had a long pause—a continuing pause—over your description of “the somewhat insular academic world of narrative medicine”. I don’t disagree; on the contrary, I think you nail it, insofar as any phrase can.
It’s a sort of zen koan to me: Is the insularity of narrative medicine because it’s situated in academia, or is it situated in academia because that fits an insularity that’s somehow inherent to the project? That takes me to what I perceive as another paradox: as academia has become more self-conscious about diversity and inclusion issues, it seems more insular to me.
But I’m going on 10 years retired and was teaching via zoom, many miles from where my students actually lived and worked. So what do I know. I do know enough to keep reading, and I just finished reviewing Jay Baruch’s Tornado of Life. If I were asked to designate a non-insular clinical practice based on narrative, I’d recommend Jay’s writing. I wonder if you’ve seen it yet.
With best wishes, your old friend Art
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