For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in eight
writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and suburban
Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly fashion their
memories through personal narrative. Her innovative book involves
the reader in the construction of life stories as a richly
rewarding and highly social process that often reveals the types of
relationships that dominate the lives of group members, the
majority of whom are women.
Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her anxiety
and triumph in presenting her writing to women old enough to be her
mother, some of a different race and class, Beyond Nostalgia is an
excellent primer for professionals working with diverse groups in a
variety of settings. It is also an important contribution to the
emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book demonstrates its
own thesis that the presentation and negotiation of life stories in
writing groups initiates change and personal growth among older
people.
Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of meeting
conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life stories themselves,
Ray tells a story of adult development through personal narrative.
She recreates the group process through which age peers begin to
articulate what life means, both individually and collectively. The
writing groups of older adults that Ray studied challenged their
members to consider not just cultural influences, but generational
effects on the evolving content and structure of their life
stories.
Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists and she
makes a strong case for the need to learn how women make meaning of
their lives across the life span. As an important document and
analysis of that process, Beyond Nostalgia should appeal to
academics and practitioners in women's studies, composition
studies, gerontology, developmental psyschology, sociology, social
work, and linguistics, and to anyone who works with older
people.
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