Todd Meyers, "All That Was Not Her" (Duke UP, 2022)
While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Meyers met a woman named Beverly. In\xa0All That Was Not Her\xa0(Duke UP, 2022)\xa0Meyers presents an intimate ethnographic portrait of Beverly, stitching together small moments they shared scattered over months and years and, following her death, into the present. He meditates on the possibilities of writing about someone who is gone\u2014what should be represented, what experiences resist rendering, what ethical challenges exist when studying the lives of others. Meyers considers how chronic illness is bound up in the racialized and socioeconomic conditions of Beverly\u2019s life and explores the stakes of the anthropologist\u2019s engagement with one subject. Even as Meyers struggles to give Beverly the final word, he finds himself unmade alongside her. All\xa0That Was Not Her\xa0captures the complexity of personal relationships in the field and the difficulty of their ending.\nClaire Clark\xa0is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky\u2019s College of Medicine.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies