"Alice was always beautiful-Armenian immigrant beautiful, with
thick, curly black hair, olive skin, and big dark eyes," writes
Dana Walrath. Alice also has Alzheimer's, and while she can
remember all the songs from The Music Man, she can no longer attend
to the basics of caring for herself. Alice moves to live with her
daughter, Dana, in Vermont, and the story begins. Aliceheimer's is
a series of illustrated vignettes, daily glimpses into their world
with Alzheimer's. Walrath's time with her mother was marked by
humor and clarity: "With a community of help that included pirates,
good neighbors, a cast of characters from space-time travel, and my
dead father hovering in the branches of the maple trees that
surround our Vermont farmhouse, Aliceheimer's let us write our own
story daily-a story that, in turn, helps rewrite the dominant
medical narrative of aging." In drawing Alice, Walrath literally
enrobes her with cut-up pages from Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland. She weaves elements from Lewis Carroll's classic
throughout her text, using evocative phrases from the novel to
introduce the vignettes, such as "Disappearing Alice," "Missing
Pieces," "Falling Slowly," "Curiouser and Curiouser," and "A Mad
Tea Party." Walrath writes that creating this book allowed her not
only to process her grief over her mother's dementia, but also "to
remember the magic laughter of that time." Graphic medicine, she
writes, "lets us better understand those who are hurting, feel
their stories, and redraw and renegotiate those social boundaries.
Most of all, it gives us a way to heal and to fly over the world as
Alice does." In the end, Aliceheimer's is indeed strangely and
utterly uplifting.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!