Portland Public Library offers “Let’s Talk About It” Book Group

Exploring Human Boundaries: Literary Perspectives on Health Care Providers and Their Patients

Tuesdays in the fall at 5:30pm: September 15th; October 6; October 20th; November 10th; and December 1st

Meeting Room #4

Portland, Maine - The Portland Public Library has been selected by the Maine Humanities Council to offer “Let’s Talk About It,” a free reading and discussion group with copies of books available through the library.  This program is provided by the Maine Humanities Council’s Maine Center for the Book in cooperation with the Maine State Library.

The series, “Exploring Human Boundaries: Literary Perspectives on Health Care Providers and Their Patients,” begins September 15, 2015 at the Portland Public Library in Portland, and continues for four following sessions, through December 1.  The book group will be held in Meeting Room #4 at the Main Library at 5:30pm

Books to be read and discussed in this series include: “The Plague,” by Albert Camus; “Wit,” by
Margaret Edson; “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” by Anne Fadiman; and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” by Jean-Dominique Bauby.  A local scholar provided by the Maine Humanities Council, Michael Bachem, will facilitate the discussions.

“Exploring ideas and issues through literature has a unique and fun way of creating community,” said Nicole Rancourt, director of Let’s Talk About It. “We find that there is great interest among adults in getting together to discuss what they’ve read with others.  Having a discussion leader like Michael Bachem who is both excited about the readings and skilled in facilitating can help to deepen this experience.”

Books for the program are available for loan at the library.  Please call the Main Library at 871-1700, ext. 705, to register and come in to pick up the first book of the series.  The library is open Monday-Thursday (10 am-7 pm), Friday (10 am-6 pm), and Saturday (10 am-5 pm).

This program is offered to Maine libraries through the Maine Humanities Council in partnership with the Maine State Library.

Below is a description of each the books that will be discussed:

September 15 Discussion: The Plague, by Albert Camus
A major point of Albert Camus’ The Plague is that plagues come in many forms. It is the individual and public health responses to the “plague” that provide such rich material for discussion. Camus’ work has the additional advantage of being one of the relatively few pieces of literature that present physicians in a positive light.

 October 6 Discussion: W;t, by Margaret Edson
W;t, by Margaret Edson, is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play about the interactions between a middle-aged academic dying of ovarian cancer and her health care providers. It raises a variety of issues germane to the health care world, including the limitations of expertise, the subtleties of communication, and the lessons that can be learned around the process of dying.

 October 20 Discussion: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a short work that has entered the women’s studies canon. This early 20th century portrayal of a woman ill with an unidentified condition—what we would probably call depression—is particularly pointed on the dynamics of gender and power.

November 10 Discussion: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a nonfiction account of an epileptic child from a Hmong family living in California, and the interactions (and clashes) between her family and the American medical and social service cultures that attempt to help them. It highlights the problematic nature of communication, the significance of cultural differences in relation to that as well as to appropriate treatment, and the often very real uncertainty of diagnosis and therapy.

 December 1 Discussion: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, by Jean-Dominque Bauby
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby is a memoir by the former editor of Elle who suffered a stroke that left him only able to blink one eye. His book, composed a blink at a time, describes the almost unimaginable situation of someone at the peak of his career condemned to virtually total paralysis but full consciousness.

For more information about “Let’s Talk About It” and the work of the Maine Humanities Council, see www.mainehumanities.org or call the office in Portland at 207-773-5051.