Teaching YA Cancer Narratives: the Fault in Our Stars and Issues With

Research & Scholarship Teaching YA cancer narratives: The TEACHR Fault in Our Stars and issues with voicing illness Lynnette Lounsbury [email protected] Carolyn Rickett [email protected] Paul Race [email protected] Paul Bogacs [email protected] Avondale College of Higher Education, Cooranbong, NSW Key words: teaching YA literature; cancer have been culturally taboo. narratives; young adult literature; the fault in our stars, voicing illness, ethics and literature Introduction: Teaching Cancer Narratives “When you learn your life is threatened, FoR codes: 130201, 130204, 200506, 170106, you can turn toward this knowledge or 200599, 209999 away from it. I turned toward it” (Intoxicated By My Illness, Anatole Broyard) Abstract we anticipate Increasingly publishers are promoting illness as The following paper provides key insights into … teachers a commodifiable literary product. There is now the burgeoning field of autopathography and illness “can engage a wide range of autobiographical and fictional narratives. Increasingly publishers are promoting more fully texts that explore life-threatening illnesses from illness as a commodifiable literary product. There is in conver- the embodied perspective of protagonists. This now a wide range of autobiographical and fictional sations about trend is also evidenced in the content of young texts that explore life threatening illnesses from the text selection adult literature where concepts of the diseased embodied perspective of protagonists. This trend is and … which self, agency and mortality are explored. The aim also evidenced in the content of young adult literature literature of this paper is to provide some background where concepts of the diseased self, agency and can advance context on illness narratives and offer a close mortality are explored. Such thematic focal points realistic reading of the young adult text, The Fault in invite English teachers to further examine this represen- our Stars by John Green, in order to highlight narrative shift and to critically engage with the ethical tation of important issues such as the accurate and stance of a text, and the ways in which illness is illness that realistic portrayal of cancer, particularly in legitimately and accurately portrayed. previously the lived experience of adolescent readers. It The central aim of this paper is to provide have been is anticipated that this discussion will allow some background context on illness narratives and culturally classroom teachers to engage more fully in authorial motivation in using writing as a means to taboo. conversations about text selection and content, reduce marginalisation and stigma. Importantly, and the ways in which literature can advance we offer a close reading of the young adult text, realistic representation of illness that previously The Fault in our Stars by John Green (2012), as a ” 36 | TEACH | v13 n1 v13 n1 | TEACH | 37 TEACH Journal 13-1.indd 37 17/10/19 3:21 pm Research & Scholarship strategic means to reflect on important issues such which does not necessarily promise a neatly resolved as the accurate and realistic portrayal of cancer, health outcome, but focuses on the way in which particularly in the lived experience of adolescent difficulties are approached and suffering confronted readers. By exploring these ethical issues we with a view to important life lessons being learned anticipate classroom teachers can engage more fully along the journey. The third form of illness story, the in conversations about text selection and content, “chaos narrative” (pp. 97-114), as Frank indicates, is and the ways in which literature can advance realistic the most difficult to tell, and the most difficult to listen representation of illness that previously have been to (or read). This is because it is “the anti-narrative culturally taboo. of time without sequence, telling without mediation and speaking about oneself without being fully able Illness narratives to reflect on oneself” (p. 98). This kind of narrative is In the opening pages of his autobiographical text founded on the anxieties, and melancholia, that so Intoxicated By My Illness, Anatole Broyard (1993) often can be produced when the prospect of recovery highlights the impulse to write about illness rather is rendered impossible by chronic or terminal we anticipate than suppress his response to a cancer diagnosis: disease. … teachers “when you learn your life is threatened, you can While we acknowledge we have by necessity “can engage turn toward this knowledge or away from it. I turned over-simplified Frank’s narrative classifications more fully toward it” (p. 3). His confession is indicative of an here, even a rudimentary understanding is helpful in conver- observable narrative shift in contemporary writing, as when talking about the structural techniques sations about Schultz and Holmes (2009) point out, where “cancer frequently employed by a story teller who wishes text selection exceeded its discursive boundaries as a biological to communicate an illness experience. However, and … which entity and became the focus of intense cultural sometimes a single text may simultaneously be literature interest” (p. xi). They posit that the “shifting relations shaped by all of the multivalent trajectories of can advance between patients and medical practitioners ’helped “restitution”, “quest” and “chaos”. realistic promote …‘ the flowering of cancer narratives” (p. Because, as Frank (1995) testifies, an illness represen- xi). Increasing emphasis on the autonomy of patients diagnosis can be disruptive and the intrusive tation of and a “resistance to the authority of the medical gaze treatment dehumanising, autobiographical writing illness that or the inhumanity of medicalized settings” (Shultz & offers an opportunity to counter this sense of previously Holmes, 2009, p. xi) has also motivated marginalised fragmentation through authoring/producing a have been subjects to take up speaking positions. coherent and manageable text. And, as Roscoe culturally These increasing accounts of authors (2016) highlights, these kinds of illness texts are taboo. telling personal experiences are often called increasingly popular with readers because “… we autopathographies. Anne Hunsaker Hawkins are drawn to human stories of adventure, suffering, (1999), in her foundational work highlighted one of loss and other examples of extreme experience and the primary functions of writing this kind of genre: emotion, and to stories that allow us to vicariously ” “patients not only restore the experiential dimension experience various aspects of the human condition” to illness and treatment, but also place the ill person (p. 68). While such stories engage audiences, at the very centre of that experience” (p. 128). She Ann Jerecic (2012) highlights “Such an approach also observed that this mode of narration not only to personal narrative is, however, out of step with situates illness, and its treatments, within the author’s mainstream literary criticism, which has not, by life, but also links them with “the meaning of life” (p. and large, recognized the significance of the work 128). As a cancer diagnosis can be destabilising performed by such texts” (p. 3). While the academy and the invasive treatment dehumanising, may be reluctant to privilege the work of personally autobiographical writing offers an opportunity mediated stories on illness, popular audiences place to counter this sense of fragmentation through value on such texts. authoring/producing a coherent and manageable Part of the appeal these human stories have text. for readers can be inextricably linked to the status In looking at the ways in which such stories about of a text’s perceived authenticity. When an illness illness are variously structured, sociologist Arthur narrative is a first-hand account of a patient’s lived Frank (1995), in his influential textThe Wounded experience of illness and its treatment, the text is Storyteller, offers three classifications of illness often privileged as an agentic and therapeutic work, narratives. Firstly, the “restitution narrative” (pp. and its veracity remains uncontested. As Couser 75-96) has at its structural base the movement from (1997) notes, works of this kind typically perform the illness back to restorable health. There is a sense work of “recover[ing] variously dysfunctional bodies in which the “happy ending” drives and shapes the from domination by others’ authority and discourse text. Then there is the “quest narrative” (pp. 115-136), ... [and thus] convert the passive object into active 38 | TEACH | v13 n1 v13 n1 | TEACH | 39 TEACH Journal 13-1.indd 38 17/10/19 3:21 pm Research & Scholarship subject” (p. 291). In underscoring why he believes concern in the community and medical profession, such texts have value, Frank contends that “Through led to the Royal College Christmas Lecture for Young their stories, the ill create empathic bonds between People being orientated to this topic with the debate themselves and their listeners” (Frank, 1995, p. xii). titled, “Mental Illness and the Media”. Bolton (2000) in this address expressed this well in relation to Messaging the real other unacceptable forms of stereotyping observing, Health communication has often utilised reason “Racism and sexism are unacceptable, but we lack based approaches within messages on the an equivalent term for the prejudice which surrounds assumption that a more informed and knowledgeable mental illness” (p. 345).

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