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In the second edition of Learning to Be Old, Margaret Cruikshank examines the social construction of aging, especially women's aging, from a number of different angles: medical, economic, cultural, and political. Featuring new research and analysis, expanded sections on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender aging and critical gerontology, and an updated chapter on feminist gerontology, the second edition even more thoroughly than the first looks at the variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.
Gay and lesbian liberation as a sexual freedom movement, as a political movement, and as a movement of ideas - historical roots, legal issues and links with other movements. The author emphasises the role of women.
Prominent lesbian authors Sandy Boucher, Audre Lorde and Barbara Grier, as well as women who have never been published before share their personal experiences. These women describe the trauma they encounter when they first discover their lesbianism and when they come out their family, friends and co-workers. The 38 writers present a picture of a varied but unified, strong, hopeful group women who have overcome these problems and eagerly seek out future challenges. -- adapted from back cover.
Describes beliefs, customs, and traditions surrounding aging in America and suggests that awareness of these social construcitons can help women resist their negative impact. After critiquing cultural myths, ageism, the politics of aging, and mainstream gerontology, she proposes a feminist "gerastology" in which older women "including minorities and lesbians) interview their peers as part of the research agenda.
Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life examines films, literature, and art that focus on aging, often made by people who are over sixty-five. These texts are analyzed alongside recent gerontology research and extensive commentary from interviews and surveys of seniors to show how "stories" illuminate the dynamics of growing old by blending fact with imagination, giving a fuller picture of the aging process.
The anthology is far more culturally diverse than the few other literary collections on aging. Ranging from ancient Chinese poetry to Mary Oliver, Alice Walker, and Willie Nelson, the anthology includes poetry, fiction, philosophical essays, personal essays, humor, analyses of ageism, and folktales from Asia and Iraq. Fierce with Reality highlights writings by women, from late 19th century American literature to the present. Many facets of aging are explored, revealing the challenges and complexities of late life, and demonstrating that the aging process is both individual and social/cultural. Fierce with Reality, aimed at a general audience as well as students and professors, would be ideal for book groups.
To reflect this crucial fact, The Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures has been prepared in two separate volumes to assure that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered."--BOOK JACKET.
Aging is stressful for anyone in youth-oriented Western societies. Elderly people encounter difficulties and discrimination, sometimes because of reduced income, transportation and housing problems, and failing health, but often due to the persistent negative stereotypes that color others’attitudes and behavior toward old people. Gay men and lesbians experience these stresses, as well as the numerous additional problems associated with their sexual orientation. Gay Midlife and Maturity is a dynamic and positive volume that challenges the long-held stereotype of the sad and lonely old homosexual. A growing body of international literature, much of which is featured in this book, rejects thi...
For those who yearn for some measure of control over deathFinal Acts, offers insight and hope. Writing in a style free of technical jargon, the contributors discuss documents that should be prepared (health proxy, do-not-resuscitate order, living will, power of attorney); decision-making (over medical interventions, life support, hospice and palliative care, aid-in-dying, treatment location, speaking for those who can no longer express their will); and the roles played by religion, custom, family, friends, caretakers, money, the medical establishment, and the government.
This book brings together the research findings of contemporary feminist age studies scholars, shame theorists, and feminist gerontologists in order to unfurl the affective dynamics of gendered ageism. In her analysis of what she calls “embodied shame,” J. Brooks Bouson describes older women’s shame about the visible signs of aging and the health and appearance of their bodies as they undergo the normal processes of bodily aging. Examining both fictional and nonfiction works by contemporary North American and British women authors, this book offers a sustained analysis of the various ways that ageism devalues and damages the identities of otherwise psychologically healthy women in our graying culture. Shame theory, as Bouson shows, astutely explains why gendered ageism is so deeply entrenched in our culture and why even aging feminists may succumb to this distressing, but sometimes hidden, cultural affliction.