Art, narrative, and healing

• Memoirs of illness, crisis, disability, differentness, and survival
• Links to personal narrative and ­healing

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Memoirs of illness, crisis, disability, differentness, and survival (a reading list)

Partially sighted readers who want to listen to a title in audio should contact the National Library Service (NLS), which is part of the Library of Congress, or their state Library for the Blind.

Alden, Paulette Bates. Crossing the Moon: A Journey Through Infertility.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (childhood memories of growing up black when prejudice was intense)

Ansay, A. Manette. Limbo: A Memoir (an undiagnosed muscle disorder cuts short her career as a concert pianist)

Ascher, Barbara Lazear. Landscape Without Gravity (about her brother's death from AIDS).

Barron, Judy and Sean. There’s a Boy in Here (life with autism, from both mother’s and son’s viewpoint)

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)

Bragg, Bernard. Lessons in Laughter: The Autobiography of a Deaf Actor

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)

Brookes, Tim. Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness

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)

DeBaggio, Thomas. Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s (the early memories and the daily struggle of a man coming to terms with a progressively debilitating illness)

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)

Galli, Richard. Rescuing Jeffrey (an account of the gut-wrenching decisions Jeffrey’s parents face in the ten days after an accident leaves him paralyzed from the neck down)

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)

Hull, John. Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (from sight problems at 13, gradually becoming blind)

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).

Jezer, Marty. Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words

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")

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

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

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

Kingsley, Jason, and Mitchell Levitz. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome

Kleege, Georgina. Sight Unseen (marginally sighted and legally blind at 11 from macular degeneration, Kleege explores the meaning and implications of blindness and sightedness, reminding us that only a fraction of blind people see nothing at all)

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)

Kuusisto, Stephen. Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (in this sequel to Planet of the Blind, the author learns to live by ear)

Kuusisto, Stephen. Planet of the Blind (blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, at his mother’s urging he feigns sightedness until coming to terms with his condition)

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

Robinson, Jill. Past Forgetting: My Memory Lost and Found (a compelling account of severe memory loss as the result of a seizure, by a fine novelist who grew up in Hollywood , as daughter of writer and film executive Dore Schary)

Robison, John Elder. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s (the well-told story of life as a technologically gifted savant with high-functioning autism, with the added twist of an unusual perspective on his brother, who, as Augusten Burroughs, wrote Running with Scissors--apparently the nutty family psychiatrist was no exaggeration)

Rothenberg, Laura. Breathing for a Living (making the most of life with cystic fibrosis that takes her life at 22)

Sarton, May. After the Stroke (the poet’s journal about recovering from a mild stroke when she is in her seventies)

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)

Schreber, Daniel Paul. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (memoirs of madness, as recalled a century ago during confinement In a German mental asylum)

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.­

Sienkiewicz-Mercer, Ruth and Steven B. Kaplan. I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes. (Encephalitis at 5 weeks left Ruth, a healthy baby, paralyzed and unable to speak normally. Diagnosed an imbecile at 5 years, she was eventually institutionalized and severely mistreated at a school for the mentally and physically disabled until a staff turnover brought her help, including a method for communicating.)

Skloot, Floyd. The Night-Side: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Illness Experience (an account of how this mysterious and life-altering illness stuck overnight, dramatically changing Skloot’s life, and how he dealt with it)

Spradley, Thomas S. and James P. Deaf Like Me (parents of a child born deaf as the result of an epidemic of German measles, waste years avoiding sign language before learning how to communicate with their child)

Styron, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (on serious depression)

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)

Vincent, Eleanor. Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story (how the daughter's fall from a horse ended in organ donations--transforming a mother's grief)

Walker, Lou Ann. A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family (what it was like growing up hearing as the oldest child of deaf parents)

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)

Wilensky, Amy S. Passing for Normal (a moving account of life with a long-delayed diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder—and an “exploration of the larger themes of difference and the need to belong”)

Willey, Liane Holliday. Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome (a mother’s account of her own and her daughter’s life with Asperger’s syndrome).

Williams, Donna. Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic (after 25 years, the daughter of abusive parents begins to emerge from a hallucinatory world—a view of autism totally different from Temple Grandin’s)

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 (about their con-man 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)

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How putting events into a story may aid the healing process.

Adventure in Chinatown, by Susie Silook

Alzheimer's: Mementos help preserve memories

Art for Recovery (UCSF)

Auntie's Awakening (Tamara Jones story in Washington Post about how the pretzel queen's personal awakening led her to start Seven Women, Seven Weeks, Seven Stories)

Creating a story of the self (from Storycatcher, by Christina Baldwin)

Essays by Morris Friedell, in the early stages of Alzheimer's (Friedell who is prominently featured in The Forgetting, David Shenk's book about Alzheimer's)

Narrative and Healing (Aron S. Wolf, MD), on why telling your story is good for your health. Check out the great links at the bottom of the site.

Stories and healing (by Arthur Frank)

Stories of healing and transformation (The Healing Bridge)

StoryCorps

Telling your life story

Using stories for growing and healing, by Christiane Brems

Veterans History Project

Why write personal narratives? A doctor's experience, by Julie Connelly, MD (LitSite Alaska)

World War I diary as memorial (U.S. Marine Henry K. Kindig)

The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, by Arthur W. Frank