Graphic Medicine Books on Aging & Alzheimer's
Aliceheimer's by
A graphic memoir of the author's experiences of her mother's battle with dementia. Illustrates the two-way nature of storytelling as a process that heals both the giver and the receiver of story.
ISBN: 9780271074689Publication Date: 2016-04-15
Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by
In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through a mixture of cartoons, family photos, documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"--With predictable results -- the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies -- an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades -- the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.
ISBN: 9781608198061Publication Date: 2014-05-06
Tangles by
What do you do when your outspoken, passionate, and quick-witted mother starts fading into a forgetful, fearful woman? In this graphic memoir, the author reveals how Alzheimer's disease transformed her mother, and her family, forever. In spare black-and-white drawings accompanied by prose, the author shares her family's journey through a harrowing range of emotions - shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration - all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness. This book confronts the complexity of Alzheimer's disease, and gradually opens a knot of moments, memories, and dreams to reveal a bond between a mother and a daughter that will never come apart.
ISBN: 9781616086398Publication Date: 2012-05-01
Wrinkles by
Admitted to a home for the elderly because he suffers from Alzheimer's disease, Emilio's community life feels like an ordeal. But soon he accepts his new environment and decides to fight to escape from giving in to his awful destiny. Even as his memory flutters, he and new friend Miguel, an overconfident ladies' man, invent creative ways to enliven their daily routines and strike a blow for personal freedom. It all culminates in a foolhardy, madcap, nightime joyride ... of sorts.
ISBN: 9781606999325Publication Date: 2016-07-26
Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park by ISBN: 9780271071121Publication Date: 2015-11-15In this graphic novel, the author documents his reconciliation with his father, dying of emphysema, as he cares for him in hospice.
Us Two Together by
An account of the author's experience of her father's illness, primary progressive aphasia, in graphic novel format.
ISBN: 9780271084916Publication Date: 2019-10-14
