Age Speaks for Itself

by Koch, Tom

• ISBN13: 9780275967963
• ISBN10: 0275967964
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-30
• Publisher: Praeger Pub Text

Summary

This is the long awaited third book in Tom Koch's trilogy on aging. Mirrored Lives was a detailed first person account of geriatric illness from the perspective of the caregiver. It was followed by A Place in Time; here the issue of elder care was more generally considered from the perspective of other care givers. Assumptions about elder care, and more generally about caring for the fragile, were challenged in the analysis of the commonalities of caregiver narratives. Age Speaks for Itself completes the examination through the presentation of 11 separate narratives of the fragile. The introductory chapter argues that as a society we tend to possess a sense of animosity toward our elders. The images of age--the "greedy geezer" and the "suitcase granny"--are, it shows, constructions with little basis in reality. Koch reviews myths of age and compares them to the realities of the lives presented in this book. He critiques theories of age as a necessarily unique and last stage of human life. Instead, he concludes, longevity defines not a necessary difference, but a social state in which seniors are marginalized. The reason, he argues, is that we fear the fact of human mortality that age represents in our culture. This is an important and gripping look at the elderly, primarily through their own lives, and must reading for anyone who has ever thought about the implications of growing old in American society.

Author Biography

TOM KOCH is a writer and researcher specializing in medical ethics and in public information theory. He is an adjunct professor of gerontology at Simon Fraser University and an associate of the Center on Aging, University of Hawaii. This is the third book in his trilogy on age and elder care

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: ``Nothing Fails Like Success''	1	(18)
A Brocaded Brassiere with Red Knickers	19	(16)
Puck, and Damn Proud of It	35	(10)
A Russian Spring	45	(12)
A Nursing Life	57	(14)
The Teenage Bride	71	(12)
The Coward	83	(10)
Lloyd's Other Life: The Dancer	93	(16)
Lodgings	109	(8)
There Was a Crooked Man...	117	(10)
...Who Walked a Crooked Mile	127	(16)
The Millennium Watcher	143	(8)
Discussion: The Experience of Age	151	(24)
Bibliography	175