1 option
What remains : the suitcases of Charles F. at Willard State Hospital / Ilan Stavans and Jon Crispin.
- Format:
- Book
- Series:
- Excelsior editions.
- Excelsior editions
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Psychiatric hospital patients--New York (State)--Fiction.
- Psychiatric hospital patients.
- Luggage--Pictorial works.
- Luggage.
- Photography, Artistic.
- Willard State Hospital (N.Y.)--History--Sources.
- Willard State Hospital (N.Y.).
- F., Charles, died 1950--Estate.
- F., Charles.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (130 pages).
- Place of Publication:
- Albany : Excelsior Editions, [2020]
- Summary:
- "After the closure of Willard Psychiatric Center on New York's Seneca Lake in 1995, a trove of over four hundred abandoned suitcases was discovered in its attic. The suitcases contained thousands of personal possessions belonging to former patients. Three of the suitcases were owned by Charles F., an eighty-four-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant arrested at a Brooklyn subway station in 1946 and institutionalized at Willard State Hospital (as it was then known). An extraordinary collaboration between image and text, What Remains pairs Jon Crispin's gripping photographs of Charles's belongings with Ilan Stavans's intriguing, speculative portrait of a patient and institution at odds with one another. Anxious, isolated, and senile, Charles strikes an unexpected friendship with a young doctor whose empathy accompanies him through a sudden spiritual awakening. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Stavans, himself an immigrant from Mexico whose family is marked by bouts of mental illness, approaches his character as a surrogate of his own personal journey. Crispin's photographs of Charles's possessions-including clothing, household tools, and Jewish ritual objects-are haunting in their power to compel the reader to imagine a distant man's life. A moving blend of fact and fiction, photography and prose, What Remains reflects on questions of mental health, spirituality, and the Jewish immigrant experience in midcentury America"-- provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- What remains / Ilan Stavans
- The suitcases of Charles F. at the Willard State Hospital / photographs by Jon Crispin
- Memory is a box without edge : a conversation between Ilan Stavans and Jon Crispin.
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
- Includes bibliographical references.
- ISBN:
- 9781438478913
- 1438478917
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.