Grief Work as Autotheory
Description
Grief Work as Autotheory is an interdisciplinary, narrative non-fiction book that tests the boundaries between experimental autobiography and life writing scholarship. Written by Meg Jensen, a scholar whose career has focused on how we process trauma through writing, this memoir explores the author's own experience of losing her sister to suicide. Bringing in literary touchstones such as Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as artists like Vincent van Gogh and Thomas Gainsborough, Jensen mines her years of research to bring clarity to her own loss and grief. Introduced with a preface by Julia Watson and including a separate essay on the author's reflections on trauma theory and life writing scholarship in creative practice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of life writing and creative writing, as well as those interested in the relationship between literary work, trauma and healing.
Reviews / Votes
"Like other stellar memoirs about grief and trauma, Grief Work surprises by being about love and resilience. Meg Jensen joins life writers Joan Didion, Gillian Rose, and Maggie Nelson in writing a book about the singularity of love and family, the endurance of pain, and the mystery of survival. As she seeks to work out the roots of her sister's suicide, Jensen arrives at what she describes as the "negotiated truth" of trauma, discovering their shared vulnerability and the gift of her sister's love." (Leigh Gilmore, Professor Emerita, Ohio State University, US)
"Grief Work is a true original. It is a powerfully written, brave, devastating book, which somehow manages to feel both raw and accomplished. I have been living it for the last three or four days, and it has provoked a visceral response, making me feel anxious as I went along, sucking the air out of my lungs, but ultimately it has had a cathartic effect. It's a privilege to have had a chance to read such a great work so early." (Professor Vesna Goldsworthy, FRSL, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, UK)
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Person
Meg Jensen is Professor Emerita at Kingston University, and has published widely on the complex relations between traumatic experience and storytelling in many forms and applies that research to support the health and well-being of marginalised communities. Recent publications including The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical: Negotiated Truths , Palgrave 2019. She lives with her husband without whom no writing would have been possible, and two clingy cats who were no help at all.
Content
Chapter 1: Foreword by Julia Watson.- Chapter 2: The Bridge of Sighs.- Chapter 3: Because Sisters.- Chapter 4: Mary and Margaret.- Chapter 5: The end of her story.- Chapter 6: Afterword by Meg Jensen.