1 option
American afterlife : encounters in the customs of mourning / Kate Sweeney.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Sweeney, Kate, 1978-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Funeral rites and ceremonies--United States.
- Funeral rites and ceremonies.
- Mourning customs.
- United States.
- Mourning customs--United States.
- Undertakers and undertaking--United States.
- Undertakers and undertaking.
- United States--Social life and customs.
- Manners and customs.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 216 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2014]
- Summary:
- What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale--that of death in America. It's a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who find themselves personally involved with death: a klatch of obit writers in the desert, a funeral voyage on the Atlantic, a fourth-generation funeral director--even a midwestern museum that takes us back in time to meet our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another until something larger is revealed: a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny.
- Contents:
- Chapter 1 American Ways of Death 1
- Chapter 2 Gone, but Not Forgotten 9
- Dismal Trade: Sarah Peacock, Memorial Tattoo Artist Under the Skin 29
- Chapter 3 The Cemetery's Cemetery 37
- Dismal Trade: Kay Powell, Obituary Writer The Doyenne Speaks 57
- Chapter 4 The Last Great Obit Writers' Conference 67
- Chapter 5 Give Me That Old-Time Green Burial 93
- Dismal Trade: Oana Hogrefe, Memorial Photographer Memory Maker 107
- Chapter 6 The House Where Death Lives 117
- Dismal Trade: Lenette Hall, Owner, The Urngarden The Business at the Back of the Closet 143
- Chapter 7 With the Fishes 151
- Dismal Trade: Anne Gordon, Funeral Chaplain Funerals Are Fun 175
- Chapter 8 Death by the Roadside 183.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references.
- ISBN:
- 9780820346007
- 0820346004
- OCLC:
- 841228395
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.