ABSTRACT
In the Western tradition, we can date first-person life writing about illness and disability from classic texts like John Donne's, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Several Steps in My Sickness and the essays of Michel de Montaigne. The author refers to autosomatography as 'quality of life writing' because this body of work has great potential to demystify and destigmatise the conditions it recounts from the inside. Ann Jurecic's essay focuses on an emerging genre, the lyrical essay, which can address illness and disability in ways that sidestep the need for a narrative arc. The article, Susannah Mintz's 'Mindful skin: disability and the ethics of touch in life writing' represents a foray into relatively unfamiliar territory. It focuses on the body in a very particular way but it is also attentive to the mind. She concludes with a discussion of Mark O'Brien's memoir How I Became a Human Being and Sharon Cameron's Beautiful Work: A Meditation on Pain.
