American Afterlife (eBook)

Encounters in the Customs of Mourning

Kate Sweeney (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2014
232 Seiten
University of Georgia Press (Verlag)
978-0-8203-4689-2 (ISBN)

Infos

An award-winning writer explores the patchwork American cultural history of grieving the departed. One family inters their matriarch's ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, "e;You can make mummies with it!"e; while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter's grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected where her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter's hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes. What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale-that of death in America. It's a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who are personally involved with death: obit writers in the desert, an Atlantic funeral voyage, a fourth-generation funeral director-even a midwestern museum that shows us our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another, revealing a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. "e;Sweeney's quest for the "e;why"e; behind mourning rituals has given us a book in the best tradition of narrative journalism."e; Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing about Grief and Loss

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.10.2020
• Zusatzinfo: 8 b&w photos
• Verlagsort: Athens
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Trennung / Trauer
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie ► Volkskunde
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
• ISBN-10: 0-8203-4689-6 / 0820346896
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-4689-2 / 9780820346892