Description
Book Details
Title: Narrating Health: Texts, Memory, Representations
Editors: Punnya K and Malavika J
Editors’ Affiliation: Senior Research Fellows, Department of English, St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Devagiri, Kozhikode, India
Publisher: Cogniverse Press, Nakari Gaon, Borigaon Siding, Jorhat – 1, Assam, India
First Edition: April 2026
ISBN: 978-93-47652-93-6 (Print Edition)
e-ISBN: 978-93-47652-44-8 (Digital Edition)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19206105
Cover Photo Artist: Abhilash Thiruvoth
Cover Designing: Punnya K
Published by: Cogniverse Press, Jorhat, Assam, India
Printed at: Cogniverse Press, Nakari Gaon, Borigaon Siding, Jorhat – 1
Copyright and Disclaimer
© Authors
The views, interpretations, and research findings presented in this publication are solely those of the respective authors. The editors and the publisher bear no responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, or validity of the content herein.
Preface
Illness is not only a physiological condition that requires diagnosis and treatment; it is also lived, remembered, and narrated through personal experiences, cultural frameworks, and collective histories. Literary texts, personal narratives, and cultural representations therefore provide important ways of understanding how individuals and communities make sense of suffering, care, and healing.
Narrating Health: Texts, Memory, Representations brings together contributions from scholars working across diverse areas of literary and cultural studies. The volume explores how illness is represented in narrative forms and how these representations shape our understanding of the body, suffering, care, and recovery. Through analyses of novels, memoirs, historical testimonies, and cultural texts, the contributors demonstrate how storytelling becomes an important medium through which illness experiences are expressed, interpreted, and remembered.
The chapters are organised into five thematic sections. The first section examines care, compassion, and relational healing in literary and cultural narratives. The second section focuses on disability, chronic illness, and normalcy, exploring how illness reshapes identity and meaning. The third section investigates gendered bodies and narrative control, highlighting issues of bodily autonomy, power, and representation. The fourth section addresses memory, trauma, and suffering, while the final section reflects on ageing, degeneration, and end-of-life narratives.
The essays in this collection demonstrate that illness narratives are not merely descriptions of suffering but also spaces for reflection, empathy, and cultural understanding. By bringing together diverse scholarly perspectives, the volume seeks to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and contribute to contemporary discussions on health humanities and literary studies.
The editors express sincere gratitude to all contributors, reviewers, and supporters whose guidance and commitment made this volume possible.
Punnya K
Malavika J
Editors
Key Themes
- Illness narratives and cultural representation
- Care, empathy, and healing
- Disability and chronic illness
- Gender, body, and narrative authority
- Memory, trauma, and suffering
- Ageing, degeneration, and mortality
- Health humanities and interdisciplinary literary studies
Table of Contents
I. Care, Compassion, and Relational Healing
- Ethics of Care and Hospice Narratives in the Korean Dramas Move to Heaven and If You Wish Upon MeDakshina S
- Narratives of Care and Compassion: Communication and Empathy in Markus Zusak’s The Book ThiefDr A Vasanthi
- Between Street and Species: Roadkill, Empathy, and HealingMagdalena Jagodzka
- Narratives of Caregiving in Tamil Postcolonial Fiction: Therapeutic Representations of Suffering and Resilience in Select Works of Perumal MuruganDr Archana R, Simona D
- Redrawn Maps, Fractured Lives: Lived Experiences of Trauma and Health Crises in 1947 Partition VoicesMd Sidratul Muntaha, Devashree Narayan
II. Disability, Chronic Illness, and Normalcy
- Reading Between the Lines: The Overlooked Perspective of Lucy in When Breath Becomes AirParvathy P Rajeev
- A Desert Blessing, an Ocean Curse: A Reading of “Scar” and “Oblivion” in John Green’s The Fault in Our StarsAnindita Mukherjee
- Redefining “Normal” and Reinterpreting Adversity in Lisa Genova’s Love AnthonySofiya B, Dr T Subitha
- Exploring Disability: Liminal Phase to Stable IdentityAneena Sabu
- Bureaucratic Illness: Institutional Indifference and the Narrative of Helplessness in Anand’s “Rogam”Dr Manosh Manoharan
III. Gendered Bodies and Narrative Control
- Pathologising Dissent: Female Madness, Medical Authority, and Narrative Control in “The Yellow Wallpaper”Tanishka
- The Rebellious Womb: Power and Pain in Atwood’s Maternal NarrativesS Dhini, Dr R Mary Christobel
- Writing from the Disabled Maternal Body in Anne Finger’s Past DueDr Mohana Priya A
- Literature as Therapy: Healing, Memory, and Emotional Survival in The Color PurpleK Jasmine, Dr K M Keerthika
- The Forbidden Breast: A Reading of M. Mukundan’s “Breast Milk”Malavika J
IV. Memory, Trauma, and Suffering
- At the Edge of Life: Suffering, Memory, and Meaning in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange WorldDr Jyothsana M Ramesh
- From Fragmentation to Resilience: Memory and Trauma in I’ve Never Been (Un) HappierJuhi Elizabeth Sajan
- The Syntax of Suffering: Narrative Reconstruction through Creative LiteratureDr Nadira Brioua
- Narrativising Mental Health: Analysing the Therapeutic Potential of Florence Welch’s Useless MagicOishi Banerjee
- Stories as Survival: Partition Literature and the Art of HealingJishina Gopinath
- The Symptomatic Palimpsest: Illness as a Medium of Cultural Translation in O. V. Vijayan’s The Legends of KhasakBhavani Singh N, Dr Sudhir Narayan Singh
V. Ageing, Degeneration, and End-of-Life Narratives
- Health of the Elderly Characters: A Gerontological Study of Bengali Detective FictionAheli Chaudhuri
- Narrating Illness, Degeneration, and Dignity: A Circuit of Culture Reading of Still AliceFrancia P A, Dr Suja Mathew
- Interrogating the Ethical Implications of the Doctor-Patient Relationship in Atul Gawande’s Being MortalKatha Bhattacherjee
- End-of-Life Experience and the Meaning of Suffering: A Comparative Study of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Plath’s The Bell JarKomal Pal
- A Portrait of Sickness: Disease and Desire in the Select Works of Madhavikutty and K. R. MeeraSwathi Krishna
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