To Live in the Center of the Moment: Literary Autobiographies of AgingIn To Live in the Center of the Moment, Barbara Frey Waxman examines the emergence of the evocative literature of aging and demonstrates how these autobiographies challenge negative cultural associations of old age. Waxman has selected narratives that focus not on the broad sweep of a person's life but on the period when aging becomes central to the subject's definition of self. The author shows how assessing these literary autobiographies has changed her perceptions and helped her come to terms with impending old age. |
Contents
Elderly Parents Seen through | 18 |
The Passage to Seventy | 56 |
Women Warriors against Racism and Ageism | 92 |
Philosophical Musings | 134 |
Common terms and phrases
African-American AGING AUTOBIOGRAPHERS American attitudes Audre Lorde autobiographies of aging Barbara Myerhoff become biographical Blalock body breast cancer chapter Clifton consciousness create creative culture culture's David Gutmann death describes deterioration Donald Hall dying elderly elders energy Erik Erikson experience father fear feel feminist fly fishing friends gender gerontologists great-grandmother great-grandmother's Grumbach Gutmann Hall's heteroglossia Howell Raines identity intensity journal L'Engle L'Engle's language life's literary autobiographies lives Lorde Lorde's loss mastectomy memoir memories MIDDLE-AGED CHILDREN'S EYES midlife crisis mirror mirror stage mortality mother narrative narrator nursing home old age older one's oppression pain parents PASSAGE TO SEVENTY Patrimony person Philip Roth philosophical physical pleasure present psychological questions race RACISM AND AGEISM Raines Raines's readers reading reality reflection relationships role Roth's Samuel Sarton Schachter-Shalomi Scott-Maxwell senescence senility sense spiritual subject-positions tion truth Velma Wallis voices WARRIORS AGAINST RACISM wisdom woman WOMEN WARRIORS writing younger youth