Age By Design: Literature and Aging

Description

Join author Margaret Cruikshank at the Jesup Memorial Library on Saturday, May 26 at 1:30 p.m. for a conversation about aging and literature. Cruikshank, who has edited and written books on aging, will speak about how literature can help people through the aging process.
 
Cruikshank, who retired from the University of Maine after fifteen years in the women’s studies department, is now a faculty associate at University of Maine Center on Aging (CoA). The Center on Aging is a multi-disciplinary center within the University of Maine System devoted exclusively to aging-related education and training, research and evaluation, and community service. Cruikshank is the author of “Learning to be Old: Gender, Culture and Aging” which examines what it means to grow old in America today. The book questions social myths and fears about aging, sickness, and the other social roles of the elderly, the over-medicalization of many older people and ageism. She is also the editor of “Fierce with Reality: Literature on Aging” an anthology that includes poetry, fiction, philosophical essays, personal essays, humor, analyses of ageism, and folktales from Asia and Iraq. The book explores many facets of aging and reveal the challenges and complexities of later life while showing that aging process is both individual and cultural.
 
This talk is part of Age By Design, which is a series of programs co-sponsored by the Jesup, the YWCA Mount Desert Island, the Mount Desert Island YMCA and Island Connections that focuses on all facets of life for people ages 50 and over.
 
For more information about the talk contact the Jesup at 207-288-4245 or athomas@jesuplibrary.org.