Last Writes: A Daybook for a Dying Friend

by Laurel Richardson

Overview

Betty Frankel Kirschner succumbed to emphysema one day in June. She had been a long-term professor at Kent State University, founding member of the feminist caucus in sociology, a political activist, a chain smoker. Close friend Laurel Richardson, a key figure in literary turn in ethnographic writing, kept a daybook, relating their conversations and interactions over Betty’s last few months. Rich in memory, emotion, dreams, and life-and-death decisions, the daybook chronicles the ups and down of a terminally ill woman and the impact that illness has on friends, colleagues, and family alike. Richardson also grapples with the ethics of writing deeply personal narratives. Part memoir, part sociological analysis, part eulogy to a departed friend, Richardson opens a poignant window into living an academic life, and ending it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781315425559
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/01/2016
Series:	ISSN
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	436 KB

About the Author

Laurel Richardson

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 October; Chapter 2 November; Chapter 3 December; Chapter 4 January; Chapter 5 February; Chapter 6 March; Chapter 7 April; Chapter 8 May; Chapter 9 June; Chapter 10 July; Chapter 11 Afterword;

Editorial Reviews

"Last Writes is a beautiful, comforting, and unflinchingly honest portrayal of the intricacies of long term friendship between two women, one dying, both giving and taking care. Though caregiving a friend is and will be a part of most of our lives, published stories about these relationships are all too rare. Laurel Richardson once again has opened a new space for autoethnographic and intimate scholarship as she invites readers into her inner, relational, and sociological experience of friendship, dying, and personal writing. Last Writes gave me a greater appreciation of the obligations and rewards of deep friendship, the meanings of giving and receiving, and the intensely personal ethics of writing first-person accounts. I will use this in my classes—qualitative methods, autoethnography, emotions, communicating grief and loss—and give copies to all my friends. This story is a literary and sociological gift to us all." —Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida


"Richardson has always written masterful prose and poetry but nothing quite as compelling as Last Writes. When writing about dying, authors find it tempting to slip into flowery prose and attempt to evoke pathos from the readers, but not Richardson. The prose in this daybook is direct, matter of fact, and to the point while all along opening new vistas, evoking powerful feelings, and making the reader feel as if she were “there.”. . .Who should read this book? Everyone. I plan to use it in my seminars on death and dying, but this book is not just about death and dying. It is a book about friendship and the work it takes to keep a friendship alive in the face of death. Most of all, this is a book about what it means to be a sensitive person and to witness the slow decline of a friend and try to hold on to that friend, and that friendship, despite the sorrow and the hurt, to the very end." - Andrea Fontana, Symbolic Interaction

From the Publisher