Dr Marie Allit - ‘And Other Essays’: Illness Narratives and Creative Non-Fiction

This paper discusses the changing forms of illness narratives, where contemporary works are moving away from traditional modes of pathography or chronological memoir, to something closer to the essay form. Thinking especially about collections of works such as Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays From a Nervous System (2017) by Sonja Huber and The Empathy Exams: Essays (2014) by Leslie Jameson, I explore the idea of the essay compilation, what relationship each piece has with one another, and what this indicates about current approaches to illness memoir and medical experiences. Does the essay form suggest a different representational relationship with the illness experience? Is the essay a means of marking the chronicity of certain conditions? Is the essay a unique domain of the body, and the self?