{"id":3519,"date":"2022-11-08T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2022-11-08T09:30:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T08:30:37","slug":"cindy-weinstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2022\/11\/08\/cindy-weinstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Right Words, a book on Grief, Dementia, and Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Podcast with Cindy Weinstein<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CindyIn this episode, we get to speak with Cindy Weinstein, co-author of FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS, a memoir about losing a parent after a ten-year struggle with dementia. Weinstein is the Eli and Edythe Broad Professor of American Literature at the California Institute of Technology, where she has taught and written several academic books since 1989, including Time, Tense, and American Literature: When is Now? (Cambridge, 2018). Most recently, she has published, with Dr. Bruce Miller, Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain, a prize-winning dual memoir that focuses on Cindy\u2019s father, Jerry, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s in the 1980s. In order to write the book, which combines autobiography, literary criticism, and neurology, Cindy studied neurology at UCSF\u2019s Global Brain Health Institute, attending classes, grand rounds, and differential diagnoses, reading memoirs, and drafting her book with Bruce. Chapters go back and forth between Cindy\u2019s voice and Bruce\u2019s, with Cindy describing her father\u2019s \u201cclinical presentations,\u201d including word-finding difficulties, spatial disorientation, and behavioral changes, which Bruce then discusses from a neurological point of view. The two cultures, as C.P. Snow described them years ago, are bridged, as the humanities and sciences come together and harmonize. Finding the Right Words is told in this way in order to describe the complexities of grief, to disseminate Bruce\u2019s knowledge of neurology, to share Cindy\u2019s expertise in and love of literature, and, most importantly, to honor the deep humanity of a beloved father.<\/p>\n

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Link to the website for Finding the Right Words<\/em><\/a><\/strong>.
\nLink to the images for Finding the Right Words <\/em>on the book\u2019s website<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Listen to the podcast below:<\/strong><\/h3>\n