{"product_id":"white-matter-isbn-9780989360494","title":"White Matter","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne close-knit Bostonian Jewish working-class family of five sisters and one brother is forced to endure an outsized impact—and create a complicated legacy—as the popularity of lobotomy grows during the 20th century\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Janet Sternburg's grandfather abandoned his family, and her uncle, Bennie, became increasing mentally ill, Sternburg's mother and aunts had to bind together and make crucial decisions for the family's survival. Two of the toughest familial decisions they made were to have Bennie undergo a lobotomy to treat his schizophrenia and later to have youngest sister, Francie, undergo the same procedure to treat severe depression. Both heartrending decisions were largely a result of misinformation disseminated that legitimized lobotomy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWoven into Sternburg's story are notable figures that influenced the family as well as the entire medical field. In 1949, Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing the lobotomy, and in the three years that followed his acceptance of the award, more Americans underwent the surgery than during the previous 14 years. By the early 1950s, Walter Freeman developed an alternate technique for lobotomy, which he proselytized during his travels throughout the country in a van he dubbed the “Lobotomobile.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe phrase “prefrontal lobotomy” was common currency growing up in Janet Sternburg's family. In \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e she details this scientific discovery that disconnects the brain's white matter, leaving a person without feelings, and its undeserved legitimization and impact on her family. She writes as a daughter consumed with questions about her mother and aunts—all well meaning women who decided their siblings' mental health issues would be best treated with lobotomies. By the late 1970s, the surgical practice was almost completely out of favor, but its effects left a stain on American medical history. Every generation has to make its own medical choices based on knowledge that will inevitably come to seem inadequate in the future. How do we live with our choices when we see their consequences?\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly, The Big Indie Books of Fall 2015 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eWhite Matter: A Memoir of Family and Medicine\u003c\/i\u003e is Sternburg’s tale of what she discovered, put in the context of her family’s history, the currents of 20th-century psychiatry, the fallibilities of the medical profession and the painful decisions that many of us make.\" —Nancy Szokan, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In its best moments, this book raises questions about the uncertain contours of compassion . . . Sternburg is at her most astute when she can hold sometimes contradictory truths in mind.\" —Meehan Crist,\u003ci\u003e Los Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Over the last several years, writers as different as the late David Foster Wallace in \u003ci\u003eConsider the Lobster \u003c\/i\u003eand Leslie Jamison in \u003ci\u003eThe Empathy Exams\u003c\/i\u003e have expanded the boundaries of the essay and memoir. Sternburg in \u003ci\u003ePhantom Limb\u003c\/i\u003e and now with \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e is part of this vanguard.\" —\u003ci\u003eForbes Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And while lobotomization is now a discredited procedure, her discoveries were somewhat complicated: When I began this investigation, I assumed that lobotomies produced only zombie-like people. But I’ve learned since that they sometimes provided genuine relief to people who, to my surprise, were able to say how much better they were.” —\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Most of us love a good mystery. Add intergenerational secrets to the mix and you’ve just upped the grip quotient. Add to that a medical procedure that’s the stuff of nightmares and horror movies, and you’ve got a potential hit. Janet Sternburg’s memoir \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e (Hawthorne Books, 2014) takes this recipe and adds a layer of truth.\" —Basya Laye, \u003ci\u003eJewish Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A beautiful, moving, and thought-provoking new book . . . \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e isn’t a conventional hybrid memoir . . . Neuroscientists believe that walking, like meditation, yoga, and, yes, writing can actually restore connection and balance between the frontal cortex and the midbrain, between perception and reaction, thinking and feeling . . . Don’t the best memoirs do the same? Reconnect feeling and language, experience and expression; bridge the space, as Sternburg writes, in this lovely, healing book, between a memory and a story?” —Suzanne Koven, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e builds with the suspense and gathering unease of a horror story. [There is] a poignant honesty and vulnerability to the narrating voice, as well as a sense of urgency. \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e shines when creating what Sternburg finds lacking in medical culture: 'fellow-feeling—a link with another person, a baseline recognition that all of us are in this together, as well as a particularized recognition of the situation of another.'\" —Katherine Hayes, \u003ci\u003eWomen’s Review of Book\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The author also touches on other well-known individuals whose family members had lobotomies, such as Allen Ginsberg’s mother and Rosemary Kennedy. A vivid and melancholy exploration into the mental illnesses that affected one woman’s family and the radical and damaging operations performed to counteract these ailments.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Janet Sternburg’s \u003ci\u003eWhite Matter\u003c\/i\u003e—which intertwines the story of two lobotomized relatives, the history of lobotomy itself, and the author’s own coming of age\/coming to writing—demonstrates that sometimes telling it slant needs to give way to telling it straight. As Sternburg grapples thoroughly with her unnerving subject, her antennae admirably stay out for that which makes us human, how we serve and fail each other, what enables both love and grace.\" —Maggie Nelson, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Argonauts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJANET STERNBURG\u003c\/b\u003e is a writer of memoir, essays, poetry and plays, as well as a fine-art photographer. She lives and works in Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her books include the memoir \u003ci\u003ePhantom Limb\u003c\/i\u003e (University of Nebraska Press, American Lives series 2002, pb 2003) and \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve: Photopoems\u003c\/i\u003e (Red Hen Press, 2005). She has commissioned and edited the classic two volumes of \u003ci\u003eThe Writer on Her Work\u003c\/i\u003e described as “groundbreaking . . . a landmark” by \u003ci\u003ePoets and Writers\u003c\/i\u003e (W.W. Norton, 1980; Volume 2, 1991, Twentieth anniversary edition, 2000). Her essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies ranging from \u003ci\u003eThe Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Literature\u003c\/i\u003e to two cover stories for \u003ci\u003eO at Home\u003c\/i\u003e: “Oprah\"s Private Library,” and “Oprah\"s Secret Garden.” (2008)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCurrently she is a regular contributor to the cultural journal \u003ci\u003eTimes Quotidian,\u003c\/i\u003e writing on the interplay between photography and writing, and writing a third memoir, \u003ci\u003eGypsy Curiosa\u003c\/i\u003e, the name of a rose whose colors intensify as it ages.","brand":"Hawthorne Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48532226703589,"sku":"NP9780989360494","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780989360494.jpg?v=1773183122","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/white-matter-isbn-9780989360494","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}