The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing

“Martina Zimmermann’s The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing is not only essential reading for anyone who has an interest in patient narratives or medical humanities broadly but is also helpful in changing the general cultural discourse that surrounds the ways in which Alzheimer’s patients are discussed. … the first study of many that seek to change the public discourse that surrounds one of our most marginalized populations.” (Kathryn Lafferty Danner, Journal of Medical Humanities, Vol. 42, 2021)

“Zimmermann’s study is the only monograph that critically examines Alzheimer’s narratives and as such, her book is an important contribution to the discourse on literary representations of the Alzheimer’s disease experience. … her work will benefit those medical humanities’ scholars who are interested in resisting the silencing tendencies of the medico-scientific discourse about dementia. … Zimmermann’s monograph continues the tradition ofhelping those who are students of the medical humanities cultivate more morally capacious ways of being in the world.” (Julie Kutac, Centre for Medical Humanities Durham University, centreformedicalhumanities.org, January, 2018)