Life stories and legacy writing (the healing powers of narrative)

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death (immobilized by a stroke, the narrator discovers the life of the unfettered imagination). Also a major movie.

Beauvoir, Simone de. A Very Easy Death (about the death of her mother)

Bernstein,Jane. Loving Rachel (about life with a blind daughter)

Black, Kathryn. In the Shadow of Polio: A Personal and Social History (a memoir of Black's childhood experience of a mother in an iron lung, wrapped in the larger story of the search for a cure)

Breslin, Jimmy.I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me (on surviving a brain aneurysm).

Brodkey, Harold. This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (the story of his confrontation with AIDS)

Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness (critical illness, in his case from cancer, as a spiritual journey)

Casey, Nell, ed. Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression

Casey, Nell, ed. An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family (and some writers on being cared for). A wonderful book, highly recommended for caregivers.

Clark, Clara Claiborne. The Seige:: The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child's Life (by the mother)

Cohen, Richard M. Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, a Reluctant Memoir (living with multiple sclerosis and later colon cancer, and how his illness affected his wife, Meredith Vieira, and their three children)

Cousins, Norman. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (a classic take on how attitude, and especially laughter, affects health outcomes)

DeVita, Elizabeth. The Empty Room: Surviving the loss of a brother or sister at any age (partly a memoir of surviving the loss of her brother Teddy to aplastic anemia)

Dew, Robert Forman. The Family Heart: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out

Dubus, Andre. Meditations from a Movable Chair and the earlier collection of essays Broken Vessels (both written after a 1986 highway accident left him largely confined to a wheelchair, and only some essays deal with his response to the accident and his view of life from a wheelchair)

Finger, Anne. Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth

Fishman, Steve. A Bomb in the Brain: A Heroic Tale of Science, Surgery, and Survival (about surviving an aneurysm)

Frank, Arthur W. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness (explores what illness can teach us about life, drawing on his experience having a heart attack and cancer)

Franzen, Jonathon, My Father's Brain (abstract of New Yorker story about his father and Alzheimer's disease, September 10, 2001)

Fries, Kenny, Body, Remember (born with incompletely formed legs, a congenital birth defect, Fries explores what it's like to be different)

Funderburg, Lise. Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (a compelling and beautifully written memoir by a grown daughter—a white-looking mixed-race girl raised in an integrated Philadelphia neighborhood—who gets to know her dying father in a string of pilgrimages to his boyhood hometown in rural Georgia)

Gilbert, Sandra. Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy (about the death of her husband after entering the hospital for routine prostate surgery)

Gordon, Barbara. I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (on addiction to prescription drugs)

Gordon, Mary. Circling My Mother (Gordon's memoir of her Irish Catholic mother, deformed by polio, eventually suffering dementia—and of their complex mother-daughter relationship)

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures (an adult with autism explains how it feels to her, and how she works as an expert in her field)

Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face (about growing up with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that severely disfigured her face)

Hammer, Signe. By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide's Daughter

Handler, Evan. Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (recounting with grim humor his battle with leukemia and his hellish journey through the land of the sick)

Hill, Susan. Family (about the death of a premature child)

Hillenbrand, Laura. A Sudden Illness—How My Life Changed (from The New Yorker). (The impact of chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS, on the author of the bestselling book, Seabiscuit.)

Hoffman,Richard. Half the House (about child abuse)

Holzemer, Liz. Curveball: When Life Throws You a Brain Tumor (in her case, a baseball-sized meningioma--and remember, a brain tumor is different from brain cancer)

Hood, Ann. Do Not Go Gentle: The Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time (her search for a miraculous cure for her father's inoperable lung cancer)

Israeloff, Roberta. In Confidence: Four Years of Therapy

Jamison, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. A classic memoir about living with manic depression (including its positive aspects).

Johnson, Fenton. Geography of the Heart (about the death of a gay partner)

Kamenentz, Rodger. Terra Infirma (a searing recollection of his mother's life and her death from cancer, his mother "yo-yoing between smothering affection and a fierce anger")

Kaysen,Susanna. Girl, Interrupted (a young girl's experiences with mental illness)

Karr, Mary. The Liar's Club (about growing up with a mentally ill mother in a dysfunctional family)

Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother (account of her younger brother's death from AIDS)

Kupfer, Fern. Before and After Zachariah (about a brain-damaged child)

Kusz, Natalie. Road Song (growing up in Alaska, being mauled by a sled-dog, undergoing reconstructive surgery)

Lachenmeyer, Nathaniel. The Outsider: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness (in which the author tries to reconstruct his father's downward spiral from a promising career as a sociology professor to his death as a schizophrenic vagrant, eluding police)

Lang, Jim. Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease

Latus, Janine. If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation

Lear, Martha Weinman. Heart-Sounds: The Story of Love and Loss (heart disease)

Lewis, Mindy. Life Inside (diagnosed as schizophrenic at 15, kept in a psychiatric hospital till 18, recovering for decades, believing she was never schizophrenic)

Lord, Audre. The Cancer Journals (explores her breast cancer and mastectomy)

Mairs, Nancy. Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled (wheelchair-bound from advancing multiple sclerosis, she offers "a Baedeker for a country to which no one travels willingly").

Maurice, Catherine. Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph Over Autism

McDonnell, Jane Taylor. News from the Border: A Mother's Memoir of Her Autistic Son

Monette, Paul. Borrowed Time, Becoming a Man, and Last Watch of the Night (a gay man battles AIDS)

Morrison, Blake. When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss

Neugeboren, Jay. Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival: A Memoir (his brother's 30-year struggle with mental illness)

Nyala, Hannah. Point Last Seen (fleeing an abusive marriage)

Patchett, Ann. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship (about her strange relationship with Lucy Grealy

Phillips, Jane. The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living with Multiple Personality Disorder

Scheff, David. Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction (chronicling a precocious teenager's spiral downward from abuse of mind- and mood-altering drugs to meth addiction)x

Scheff, Nic. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (the son's story, companion book to Beautiful Boy)

Shawn, Allen. Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life -- part memoir, part explanation, a beautifully written and fascinating account of Shawn's own anxiety and agoraphobia, and a fine summary of what is known about how we form and can learn to manage anxiety and phobias. Shawn is son of the New Yorker editor (who managed his fears by becoming boss and therefore controlling his environment) and brother of Wallace Shawn, the actor.

Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (a story that provides hope for the brain-injured, not just those who have had a stroke, as this young brain scientist did)

Taylor, Nick. A Necessary End (about death of parents)

Walker, Lou Ann. A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle (growing up in a decidedly eccentric, often homeless, family)

Waxman, Robert and Linda. Losing Jonathan (losing a beloved child to drugs)

Wexler, Alice. Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research (on Huntington's Disease)

Wiesel, Elie. Night (powerful account of surviving the nightmare world of the Nazi death camps)

Williams, Donna. Nobody Nowhere (growing up as an autistic child)

Williams, Marjorie. The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate (the last third is about her losing battle with cancer)

Wolff, Geoffrey. The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father

Wolff, Tobias. This Boy's Life (about escaping from his stepfather's abuse). Geoffrey and Tobias are brothers.

Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America (atypical depression and bouts with drugs)

[Go Top]

"...illness is terrible but, with some luck, it can also be full of wonders. The terrors assault us at once; the wonders take longer to become visible. Stories help us gain some distance from the terrors and learn to perceive the wonders, but storytelling is a skill, and like all skills, it takes practice to be most effective. Stories offer witness to all that is badly wrong and needs to be changed, and stories offer imaginations of a more generous life that can be. In telling all kinds of stories, we find healing."
~ Arthur Frank, Stories and Healing

DYING: A Book of ComfortCompanion website about dying, bereavement, loss, grief — and aging with spirit

Life stories and legacy writing (the healing powers of narrative)

Art, narrative, and healing­

DYING: A Book of Comfort
Companion website about dying, bereavement, loss, grief — and aging with spirit

Art, narrative, and healing