Our bodies, ourselves and the work of writing / Susan Wells.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wells, Susan, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boston Women's Health Book Collective.

Our bodies, ourselves--Authorship.

Our bodies, ourselves.

Feminist literature--History and criticism.

Feminist literature.

Medical literature--History.

Medical literature.

Women--Health and hygiene.

Women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published by a mainstream press in 1973, is now in its eighth major edition. It has been translated into twenty-nine languages, has generated a number of related projects, and, with over four million copies sold, is as popular as ever. This study tells the story of the first two decades of the pioneering best-seller—a collectively produced guide to women's health—from its earliest, most experimental and revolutionary years, when it sought to construct a new, female public sphere, to its 1984 revision, when some of the problems it first posed were resolved and the book took the form it has held to this day. Wells undertakes a rhetorical and sociological analysis of the best-seller and of the work of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective that produced it. In the 1960's and 1970's, as social movements were on the rise and many women entered higher education, new writing practices came into existence. In the pages of Our Bodies, Ourselves, matters that had been private became public. Readers, encouraged to trust their own experiences, began to participate in a conversation about health and medicine. The writers of Our Bodies, Ourselves researched medical texts and presented them in colloquial language. Drafting and revising in groups, they invented new ways of organizing the task of writing. Above all, they presented medical information by telling stories. We learn here how these stories were organized, and how the writers drew readers into investigating both their own bodies and the global organization of medical care. Extensive archival research and interviews with the members of the authorial collective shed light on a grassroots undertaking that revolutionized the writing of health books and forever changed the relationship between health experts and ordinary women.

Contents:

Our Bodies, Ourselves and the Work of Writing

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Writing Our Bodies

1. A Rage for Inscription

2. A Different Kind of Writer

3. A Different Kind of Book

4. What Is This Body That We Read

5. Taking on Medicine

Postscript

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-256) and index.

ISBN:

9780804773720

0804773726

OCLC:

638861399