Love, Money, Duty
Stories of Care in Our Times
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Publishing:29th Apr '25
£25.00
This title is due to be published on 29th April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
From birth to death, we care and are cared for by others. Yet we rarely acknowledge care except when it fails. In Love, Money, Duty, Rachel Adams examines the stories we tell about care, those who do the work, and those who depend on it. These narratives, she argues, help us better understand our complicated feelings about care and the obligations that come with it.
Combining insightful and compassionate readings of writers and artists—among them Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Roz Chast, Sally Mann, and Jamaica Kincaid—with stories of her own experiences, Adams analyzes the work, feelings, and ethical dilemmas associated with care, including unwelcome emotions such as boredom, resentment, exhaustion, and disgust. From the universal dependence of infancy to elder care and from the intimacy of home and family to institutions like hospitals, nursing facilities, and asylums, Love, Money, Duty considers our ambivalence about vulnerability and need and how it is shaped by capitalism, race, and gender.
Drawing from moral philosophy, gender and queer theory, critical race and disability studies, and health humanities, Adams treats care as a form of work, a feeling, an ethic, and an art. Exploring the radical possibilities of care and the devastating consequences of its failure, this book invites readers to appreciate care that works, recognizing the creativity and resourcefulness of dependent people and their caregivers.
With vivid narrative and critical nuance, Adams reveals “care” as intimate yet asymmetrical, tender yet rancorous, and always hard work. An empathetic account of the braided threads of caring that universally, if unequally, entwine human experience. A wise and affecting book. -- Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study
Rachel Adams has assembled a stunning collection of stories that bring the vivid dimensions of care to life: its everyday tasks and visceral embodiment, its psychological complications, and the macrohistorical trends that shape the intimacies of family and friendship. A necessary and original book for looking under the hood at care—a form of social infrastructure with constraints and liberations that many affirm but too few take seriously. -- Sara Hendren, author of What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World
This book could not have been written by anyone but Rachel Adams. Only a literary scholar could discern the delicate formal details of the fictional and autobiographical narratives she dissects. Only a mother of a dependent child could know the inexpressible emotions that charge care. And only a driven researcher could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the legal, economic, feminist, and political aspects of care. Read this book if you are a parent, a child, a sibling, or a worker giving or receiving care. -- Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons
ISBN: 9780231218092
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
384 pages