Difference And Identity ─ A Special Issue Of Literature And Medicine

In these 12 essays and responses, contributors explore the complex ways in which attitudes about disease, difference and disability are related and how bodies marked by particular gender, racial, disability and sexual identities experience disease in specific ways. Contributors take on such tricky topics as how the disabled feel about "coming out" as disabled, how obesity figures in disability according to ethnicity and faith, how individual perceptions of human rights figure in gender identity and advocacy, how memory affects perceptions of disability, and how race matters in recent trends in genetics. The overall impression is that despite significant work toward a social model of disability, the moral and medical models are still alive and well. Annotation c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jonathan M. Metzl is an assistant professor of psychiatry and women's studies and director of the Culture, Health, and Medicine Program at the University of Michigan. Suzanne Poirier is a professor of literature and medical education and the director of Medical Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.