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For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in
eight writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and
suburban Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly
fashion their memories through personal narrative. Her
innovative book involves the reader in the construction of
life stories as a richly rewarding and highly social process
that often reveals the types of relationships that dominate
the lives of group members, the majority of whom are
women.
Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her
anxiety and triumph in presenting her writing to women old
enough to be her mother, some of a different race and class,
Beyond Nostalgia is an excellent primer for
professionals working with diverse groups in a variety of
settings. It is also an important contribution to the
emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book
demonstrates its own thesis that the presentation and
negotiation of life stories in writing groups initiates
change and personal growth among older people.
Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of
meeting conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life
stories themselves, Ray tells a story of adult development
through personal narrative. She recreates the group process
through which age peers begin to articulate what life means,
both individually and collectively. The writing groups of
older adults that Ray studied challenged their members to
consider not just cultural influences, but generational
effects on the evolving content and structure of their life
stories.
Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists
and she makes a strong case for the need to learn how women
make meaning of their lives across the life span. As an
important document and analysis of that process, Beyond
Nostalgia should appeal to academics and practitioners
in women's studies, composition studies, gerontology,
developmental psyschology, sociology, social work, and
linguistics, and to anyone who works with older people.
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"A remarkable work of scholarship, interdisciplinary in
the best sense of the term. Ray not only incorporates but
truly integrates research from a wide range of fields,
illuminating her own work and others' in the process."
--Virginia Kerns, College of William and Mary
"There is no other book that quite matches it: a book
that simultaneously addresses the experiences of writing
groups with older adults along with the analysis of
autobiographical writing in old age."
--Harry R. Moody, Director, Brookdale Center on Aging at
Hunter College, CUNY
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