Lifting the Taboo: Women, Death and Dying
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lluminated by a profound yet humorous vision, Lifting the Taboo explores the specific relationship women of many colors, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations have to their own deaths, their attitudes towards loss, and their disposition to their role as primary care-givers to the dying.Specifically, the book weighs the implications of breast cancer and examines in detail Alzheimer's Disease which, contrary to popular myth, can in several significant ways be perceived as a women's disease. Investigating mothers' responses to children's deaths, Sally Cline establishes that women's relationships to death are intricately connected to the experience of giving birth. They are, she argues, therefore psychologically and emotionally different from those of men. Cline goes on to examine women's roles and responses to AIDS and suicide, women's sexual relationships while dying, how society views widows as leftover lives, and women's radical work in hospices and death therapy, as well as their roles as female funeral directors.
AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Background to the Book1Ch. 1Breaking the Silence13Ch. 2Earlier Times, Other Cultures and Religions42Ch. 3Mortal Messages65Ch. 4Dutiful Daughters: Private Caring87Ch. 5Female Funeral Directors116Ch. 6Widows and Other Leftover Lives140Ch. 7Deaths That Haunt: Mothers Lose Children162Ch. 8Image, Sex and the Language of Cancer196Ch. 9Sons? Do I Have Sons?219Ch. 10Suicide: Shock and Stigma245Ch. 11AIDS: The Social Death Kept Under Wraps278Ch. 12Unacknowledged Losses304Ch. 13Positive Gains320Notes347Bibliography and Further Reading362Index370
