About this item
Highlights
- Losing Helen is a moving and inspiring essay that tracks an adult daughter through the many complex phases of grief as she anticipates the inevitable loss of her elderly mother.
- About the Author: Carol Becker is Professor of the Arts and Dean of Faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City.
- 120 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
Description
Book Synopsis
Losing Helen is a moving and inspiring essay that tracks an adult daughter through the many complex phases of grief as she anticipates the inevitable loss of her elderly mother. Finding strength and guidance in the spiritual insights of writers, artists, Western religion, and Eastern philosophies, the narrator undergoes a profound transformation while striving to design an end-of-life experience that is meaningful and sacred not only for her mother but also for herself.Review Quotes
"A short and powerful evocation of a mother's death and of the events immediately preceding them. . . . those going through similar trials will take much solace from the author's story."
-Kirkus Reviews
"In this quiet, lovely essay, Becker takes readers through the years and months leading up to her mother's death and the mourning period that followed, delving into the grief of losing a much-loved parent. . . . Becker's writing is so beautiful-and the process of grieving so universal-that it deserves a wide audience."
-Publishers Weekly
Losing Helen is a compact essay whose themes probe deep. In Becker's reflective prose, she acknowledges that all "art making and writing is just an attempt to give... unfathomability form. I am not sure anyone... succeeds." Becker (The Invisible Drama) does indeed succeed--profoundly. This meditative, grace-filled gem is moving and soul-enriching.
-Shelf Awareness (starred review)
About the Author
Carol Becker is Professor of the Arts and Dean of Faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City. She has written for many print and online publications on varied topics, including the intellectual lives and emotional well-being of women. She is also the author of Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender, and Anxiety; Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art; and Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production. Her recently reissued book The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change has been translated into six languages and is available worldwide.