Product Description

This is an examination, through personal narratives and reflective commentary, of life without sensation or movement in the body. In writing "Still Lives", Jonathan Cole wanted to find out about living in a wheelchair, without having what he calls "the doctor/patient thing" intervene. He has done this by asking people with spinal cord injuries the simple question of what it is like to live without sensation and movement in the body. If the body has absented itself, where does the person reside? He describes his method in the first chapter: "I have gone to people, not with a white coat or a stethoscope...[but] to listen to their lives as they express them," and it is the candid and powerful narratives of twelve people with spinal cord injuries that form the heart of the book. Asking his simple question, Cole discovers that there is no single or simple answer. The twelve people with tetraplegia (known as quadriplegia in the U.S.) or paraplegia whose stories he tells testify to similar impairments, but widely differing experiences. "Still Lives" moves from a view of impairment as tragedy to reveal the possibilities and richness of experience available to those living with spinal injuries. More universally, it offers new perspectives on our relation to our bodies. In exploring the creative and imaginative adjustments required to construct a "still life," it makes a plea for the able-bodies to adjust their view of this most profound of impairments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263136 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 342 pages

Review
"Illuminating reading; inspiring, too." - New Scientist"

About the Author
Jonathan Cole, D.M., F.R.C.P., is Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology, Poole Hospital, and at Salisbury Hospital (with its Spinal Centre), a Professor at Bournemouth University and a visiting Senior Lecturer, Southampton University. He is the author of about Face (1997) and Pride and a Daily Marathon (1995). both published by The MIT Press.

Customer Reviews

this book was fascinating
I have just started studying medicine at university and came accross this book when looking for my core texts. Spinal cord injuries have always fascinated me and this book brings together a collection of stories from mainly people with tetraplegia who frankly discuss their lives and how disability has altered it. Some are really inspiring and others, distressing, you can really feel how difficult it must be to experience such a life changing event like an injury to the spinal cord. With approachable prose this book is great for anyone with an interest in this topic. It is really well written and I took a lot away with me after reading it.