Moral Storytelling in Illness Narratives Dialogue, Subjectivity, Justice

This book explores the rhetorical and ethical dynamics of didactic illness narratives, including works by Audre Lorde, Philip Roth, and Sara Maguso, focusing in particular on how these narratives defy prevailing critical notions about the formal and cultural value of moral storytelling. Didactic illness narratives have long been viewed with suspicion or outright ignored by critics. Moral Storytelling in Illness Narratives: Dialogue, Subjectivity, Justice seeks to disrupt this consensus by demonstrating that many formally and politically sophisticated narratives have clear didactic purposes and that, when they achieve these purposes, they do important cultural work.