Tag Archives: health

Indigenous children’s book ‘Little Louis’ aims to curb COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy with a culturally relevant story

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The children’s book, Little Louis, tells the story of a young boy preparing for his COVID-19 vaccination.
(Morning Star Lodge), Author provided

Patrick Sullivan, University of Saskatchewan and Heather O’Watch, University of Saskatchewan

The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for everyone. But communities are different, and so are their pandemic experiences. After more than a year of uncertainty and frustration, vaccines have brought many a sense that a return to normal is on the horizon. However, health and research communities now face a new challenge: vaccine hesitancy.


Click here for more articles in our series about vaccine confidence.

While there are countless reasons to be vaccine hesitant, we must acknowledge the numerous legitimate reasons for hesitancy.

For example, if a community has experienced an exhausting history of medical experimentation, forced or coerced sterilization and breaches of trust by the very institutions presenting the vaccine, their hesitancy is based on cultural or historical factors and entirely distinct from the “anti-vaxx” movement.



Read more:
Nutrition researchers saw malnourished children at Indian Residential Schools as perfect test subjects

This is the daunting reality for many Indigenous communities across the country. As a result, there is an urgent need to repair trust and promote vaccine confidence through evidence-based knowledge.

At Morning Star Lodge, we are part of a partnership between the community research advisory committee at Star Blanket Cree Nation and Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP). Together we have collaborated to promote vaccine confidence while demonstrating the importance of community-led research.

Reflecting culture

We entered into this partnership to promote vaccine uptake under the direction of Indigenous communities. Through our discussions, we came to solutions about ways we could promote COVID-19 vaccination information — like booklets for Indigenous children and adults. After coming up with several solutions, Star Blanket Cree Nation’s research advisory committee members pointed towards an additional need: A children’s book, and in came Little Louis.

Many Indigenous Peoples grew up without medical information that respected or reflected their culture, the CRAC recognized the need to reverse this trend. A children’s book that reflects the identities of Indigenous children is important for making information accessible to all.

SKIP, Morning Star Lodge and Indigenous community members began to prepare a children’s book that is engaging, educational and relevant for Indigenous children experiencing needle fear or vaccine hesitancy — seeing their culture reflected in a children’s book can make all the difference when it comes to getting the jab. Needle fear or hesitation is a common feeling and there is minimal children’s literature on the topic, especially literature that is culturally relevant.

The Star Blanket Cree Nation’s cultural, community and storytelling expertise far exceeds that of SKIP or Morning Star Lodge. The community research advisory committee members live in, and are from, the communities we serve, their Indigenous Knowledge adds depth and relevance to all of our projects. Their guidance and leadership ensures that developments, like Little Louis, directly reflect community needs.

Indigenous Peoples expertise, guidance and leadership

Little Louis talks about how to prepare for getting a vaccine, what vaccines feel like and what parents and children can do in order to be supported. The intention is that Little Louis will evolve into several different stories that will target different audiences and address different issues as time goes on and different issues arise. This sort of flexibility is a requisite to working with dynamic communities.

Inflexible research was and is often the norm. “Helicopter” research (where researchers enter communities, collect data and leave, never to be heard from again) was and is still practised. This entirely one-sided interaction always benefits researchers but rarely, if ever, benefits communities. It frequently misrepresents realities for Indigenous communities and actively creates negative stereotypes that have been used to justify systemic racism.

Historically, research with Indigenous Peoples was not conducted “in a good way.” Today, researchers can be guided to correct the errors of the past through principles like OCAP (ownership, control, access and possession) and the CARE and FAIR principles for Indigenous data governance. Further, researchers can learn about ethical engagement and cultural safety to ensure their research is truly ethical and upholds community perspectives.

In practice, this means Indigenous Peoples should be at the helm of any research that may impact them or is about them. Doing so can prevent harmful misrepresentations, promote self-determination and contribute to solutions Indigenous communities actually need — like a children’s book that addresses vaccine hesitancy.

The following is a synopsis of “Little Louis.” Check the Morning Star Lodge blog for updates on publication.

Meet Little Louis

Little Louis tells the story of Louis, a young boy preparing for his COVID-19 vaccination. Louis starts by sharing his fears and frustrations with safety restrictions and the vaccine. His family listens and tells him how brave he is for making the decision to keep himself and the community safe.

Still nervous and hesitant about the vaccine, Louis’ family has an idea to create a “little” Louis, out of paper, which he can bring to the vaccination clinic during his appointment. Louis’ family also shares the story of a brave Métis leader named Gabriel Dumont and his rifle, le petit (little one).

The night before the vaccination appointment, Louis dreams of going on a fishing adventure with Little Louis where they reel in what they think is a fish but it turns out to be a big needle! Louis and Little Louis both bravely face the needle, reeling it in until it turns into the big catch they hoped for. The next morning Louis shares his dream with his family. They tell him that he was brave for facing his fears.

Finally, Louis goes to his vaccine appointment with Little Louis by his side. The doctor asks to see Little Louis to give him the vaccine first. Observing that Little Louis was brave and didn’t get scared, Louis is ready and the doctor gives Louis his vaccine. Both Louis and Little Louis are now protected from COVID-19!

Do you have a question about COVID-19 vaccines? Email us at ca‑vaccination@theconversation.com and vaccine experts will answer questions in upcoming articles.The Conversation

Patrick Sullivan, Sr. Research Assistant, Morning Star Lodge, University of Saskatchewan and Heather O’Watch, Research Assistant, Morning Star Lodge, University of Saskatchewan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Books offer a healing retreat for youngsters caught up in a pandemic

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Johnny McClung/Unsplash

Margaret Kristin Merga, Edith Cowan University

Parents at a loss to find activities for their children during COVID lockdowns can encourage them to escape into a book. New research shows how reading books can help young people escape from their sources of stress, find role models in characters and develop empathy.

Recent media reports have highlighted a concerning rise in severe emotional distress in young people. Isolation and disruption of learning in lockdown have increased their anxiety. Given the recent surge in COVID-19 cases and lockdowns in Australia, parents and educators may look to connect young people with enjoyable activities that also support both their well-being and learning.

A lot has been written about the role of regular reading in building literacy skills. Now, my findings from a BUPA Foundation-funded research project on school libraries and well-being provide insight into how books and reading can help young people deal with the well-being challenges of the pandemic.

The findings suggest books can not only be a great escape during this challenging time, but also offer further well-being benefits.

Escaping from a world of stress

We know that adults who are avid readers enjoy being able to escape into their books. Reading for pleasure can reduce psychological distress and has been related to mental well-being.

Reading-based interventions have been used successfully to support children who have experienced trauma. In a recent study, around 60% of young people agreed reading during lockdown helped them to feel better.

My research project confirms young people can use books and reading to escape the pressures of their lives. As one student said:

“If you don’t know what to do, or if you’re sad, or if you’re angry, or whatever the case is, you can just read, and it feels like you’re just escaping the world. And you’re going into the world of the book, and you’re just there.”

Young girl reading book on couch next to window
‘You’re going into the world of the book, and you’re just there.’
Josh Applegate/Unsplash

Connecting with role models in characters

If you enjoy reading, there’s a good chance you have favourite characters who hold a place in your heart. The project found young people can find role models in books to look up to and emulate, which can help to build their resilience. A student described her experience reading the autobiography of young Pakistani activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai:

“I thought it was incredible how no matter what happened to her, even after her horrific injury, she just came back and kept fighting for what she believed in.”



Read more:
Nobel Peace Prize: extraordinary Malala a powerful role model

Other research has linked connecting with characters to mental health recovery, partly due to its power to instil hope in the reader. Building relationships with characters in books can also be used as “self-soothing” to decrease anxiety.

Young people also celebrate their affection for book characters in social networking spaces such as TikTok, where they share their enjoyment of the book journey with favourite characters.

Young people are taking to TikTok to share their love of books with millions of others.

Developing empathy through reading

Research supports the idea that reading books builds empathy. Reading fiction can improve social cognition, which helps us to connect with others across our lives. My previous work with adult readers found some people read for the pleasure they get from developing insight into other perspectives, to “see the world through other people’s eyes”.

In the project, a student described how reading books helped him to understand others’ perspectives. He explained:

“You get to see in their input, and then you go, ‘Well, actually, they’re not the bad guy. Really, the other guy is, it’s just their point of view makes it seem like the other guy’s the bad guy.’ ”

Your teacher librarian can help you

If parents are not sure what books will best suit their child’s often ever-changing interests and needs, they can get in touch with the teacher librarians at school. Even during lockdown they are usually only an email or a phone call away.

The library managers in the project played an important role in connecting students with books that could lead to enjoyable and positive reading experiences.

For example, a library manager explained that she specifically built her collection to make sure the books provided role model characters for her students. She based her recommendations to students on their interests as well as their needs. To support a student who had a challenging home life, she said,

“I recommend quite a number of books where we’ve got a very strong female character […] in a number of adverse situations and where she navigates her way through those.”

Fostering reading for pleasure is a key part of the role of the teacher librarian. They create spaces and opportunities for students to read in peace. They also encourage them to share recommendations with their peers.

In challenging times, many parents are looking for an activity that supports their children’s well-being. And as reading is also linked to strong literacy benefits, connecting them with books, with the support of their teacher librarian, is a smart way to go.The Conversation

Margaret Kristin Merga, Honorary Adjunct, University of Newcastle; Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How to use therapeutic writing for empowerment without revisiting trauma

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We can put boundaries in place as we write, while attending to our emerging and vulnerable feelings to ensure emotional safety.
(Shutterstock)

Elizabeth Bolton Cartsonas, University of Toronto

Writing about trauma can affect us profoundly.

A 1986 study found that students asked to write about traumatic memories reduced the number of times they visited a health centre for illness, injury, a check-up, psychiatric or other reasons in six months following the study — but that writing about trauma consistently caused emotional and physical upset immediately afterwards.

Such unpleasant after-effects are now widely accepted as part of the healing process enacted through written emotional disclosure.

Amid a global pandemic, our moral distress persists, despite the success of virtual health-care systems. Writing can be a companion to a chaotic mind in ways that do not involve revisiting trauma.

Here are three evidence-based therapeutic applications of writing and three accompanying prompts.

1. Use writing to ground

Therapists advise a method known as grounding for people suffering from distressing thoughts. Grounding entails taking note of physical surroundings to calm the triggered body by rooting it in the present. The “5-4-3-2-1” technique asks you to note five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel, two you can smell and one you can taste.

The technique parallels a writing prompt for “re-embodiment” in the present, from poet and psychotherapist Ronna Bloom. Following the advice of Bloom and trauma therapists, use simple, focused writing to take poetic hold of the present by writing about an object from your immediate surroundings.

Prompt: Find something nearby that excites your senses, like a fruit from your kitchen. Take the object in your hands. Smell it. Rub it against your cheek. Beginning with “I hold” or “I smell,” or any words you like, write for eight minutes on what you have chosen.

A journal sitting on tile with a flower on top.
Writing can be a companion to a chaotic mind in ways that do not involve revisiting trauma.
(Shutterstock)

2. Use writing to find ‘flow’

What does it mean to “live your best life”? Psychologist of optimal experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied where people were, and what they were doing, when they were living their best lives. Subjects reported living optimally while engaged in a fluid, creative state Csikszentmihalyi called “flow.”

Characterized by the ordering of thoughts in service of fluid creation, flow tends to result in an enjoyably focused, resilient state known as “psychic negentropy.” Csikszentmihalyi found those who experienced psychic negentropy regularly, including creative writers, tended to be happier people.

Prompt: For entry into flow, it is wise to select a prompt that promotes guided expansion. The ideal is to increase ease with which we enter flow and decrease distractions that make flow harder to maintain. One way to do this is to revisit a personal memory. Choose something mundane yet fresh, something you do often, with many vivid details that will keep your hand moving and thoughts engaged in the telling. Write until you feel finished.

3. Use writing as a safe play space

Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott stressed that play was crucial for child development. Developmental play occurs in a safe, bounded space. In play, children manipulate what Winnicott called “transitional objects” (usually toys, bottles or blankets).

As Winnicott noted, the space for developmental play opens for adults, too, where there is need of healing, often by way of artistic practice. For adults requiring self-understanding, transitional objects can be pen and paper, where writing is the location of bounded, safe, developmental play.

Prompt: Consider a playground for very young children with their caregivers, perhaps with a swing set and slide, within an open, grassy park. Though boundaries like a simple wooden fence surrounding the young children’s playground constitute limitations, these limitations are there to support their safety. In this bounded play space, a child explores, while their caregiver, at a slight distance, is engaged in what Winnicott described as the crucial caring act of creating a “holding” environment, or holding space, for a child — attending to and being present for them, while allowing their expression and exploration.

We can put boundaries in place for ourselves as we write, while attending to our emerging and vulnerable feelings, to ensure emotional safety in the space for developmental play.

Writing with compassionate limitation can be therapeutic and allow expansion in other directions. This means deliberately choosing to direct our focus, topics and energies.

For example, professor of psychology Laura King asked subjects to write about their “best possible future selves” and found these writers showed the same health improvement at six months as people who had written about their traumas did, minus the upset afterwards.

King prompted subjects as follows: “Think about your life in the future. Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals. Think of this as the realization of all your life dreams. Now, write about what you imagined.” As King’s subjects did, write for 20 minutes per day over four consecutive days.

If none of the above engages you, write freely and intentionally, keeping in mind that an empowering writing experience will avoid rumination, sustain engagement and leave you with a sense you have spent time meaningfully. Writing-based wellness must meet you at your own points of interest and excitement. Writing that heals is writing that comes forth easily. Consider what topic renders writing therapeutic, for you.The Conversation

Elizabeth Bolton Cartsonas, Assistant researcher, Literacy Education, Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Self-publishing may be the answer to shakeups in the book world amid COVID-19

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Sales increases for self-published titles in the pandemic is likely related to the accessibility of ebooks during bookstore and library closures.
(Shutterstock)

Elizaveta Poliakova, York University, Canada

A large publishing takeover has many in the book industry concerned about the potential lack of content diversity in the future. In the fall, Penguin Random House announced it would be taking over Simon & Schuster.

This has prompted an investigation by the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority into whether the deal would mean a “substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.” In Canada, independent publishers have called for a similar review.

Meanwhile, last winter, Coteau Books reported that it entered into bankruptcy protection and closed its operations.

As reported by Stephen Henighan in The Walrus, its closure, and the folding of a Montréal bookstore known for its support of cultural events are “signs that the infrastructure for publishing and distributing Canadian books may be crumbling.”

Even before the pandemic, changes were afoot in publishing. Some authors had criticized the fact that it was difficult for entry-level writers to publish and make a living because a small number of cult-status authors dominate the market. BIPOC and queer authors have also been under-represented in traditional publishing deals, as have books that push the boundaries of mainstream genres.



Read more:
Cultural appropriation and the whiteness of book publishing

The smash success of 50 Shades of Grey, first self-published as fan fiction and then picked up by a major publisher, was a game-changer for starting discussions about categories of literature traditionally assumed to not have the capacity to generate a large audience base. It also generated conversations about the future of independent publishing at large.

In the midst of a shifting publishing industry, some authors are driven to experiment with how they deliver their work to readers, which includes novel forms of book production independent from the traditional publishing gatekeepers.

A woman in a face mask walks by an Indigo store window.
Indigo reported last June that it had to close 20 stores. Here, a woman seen walking past Indigo in Laval, Que., in November 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Readership, sales

During the pandemic, under pandemic control measures, some are spending more time reading. An online survey by BookNet Canada found that 58 per cent of Canadian readers said they were reading more in the pandemic based on 748 online responses.

But who benefits from the apparent increase in reading? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his net worth double to over $200 billion during 2020. Meanwhile, Canada’s most well-known book retailer, Indigo, reported last June that it had to close 20 locations across the country.

In Canada, book sales were down by 20 to 40 per cent at the start of the pandemic. BookNet’s research team surveyed 51 domestic publishers who flagged that with the sudden closure of retail spaces, the industry experienced a decrease in sales of three million units in the first half of 2020 compared to the sales data from 2019.

This is troubling for local markets in particular because oftentimes big-box stores, online retailers and international conglomerates do not promote homegrown talent. Small publishers advance local writers or foster writing and reading communities, and without them, it is harder for authors to become noticed due to the abundance of international competition.

However, there is a glimmer of hope as some small local bookstores are seeing a consistent drive of shoppers who have been buying local. With pandemic closures or library restrictions, it seems some readers do seek out books from local book vendors. However, there is no way of knowing whether this boom in promoting local businesses will continue.

Conglomerate growth

In contrast to the huge gap in sales that local presses experienced in the past year, Penguin Random House saw a drop in revenue by less than 10 per cent. The company is now in a position to acquire Simon & Schuster for over US$2 billion. In November, Vanity Fair reported that this merger would mean that one out of every three books would be produced by the publishing giant.

Logo of a penguin at Penguin Random House Canada office on a silver post outdoors.
Penguin Random House Canada office seen in Toronto.
(Shutterstock)

If the merger happens, there will only be four main global publishers: Penguin Random House (and Simon & Schuster), HarperCollins, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group. Domestic presses will be affected by this merger who are already struggling to compete in the damaged marketplace.

The Association of Canadian Publishers, which represents more than 100 Canadian owned and controlled book publishers, says the potential consequences of the merger can include effects on staffing, lack of media coverage for domestic businesses and even shelf space in book stores..

Similarly, The Writers’ Union of Canada, representing more than 2,000 Canadian authors, highlights that writers will also face challenges related to their earning potential if the merger goes through.

Self-publishing

One drawback of self-publishing can be both stigma based on the possibility that one’s work has been rejected by a traditional publisher and potentially missing editing and quality control of traditional publishers. But some self-publishers now employ editors both on a paid and volunteer basis.

There is a drive to alleviate some of the stigma surrounding self-publishing, with some writers expressing that their career should not be dictated by traditional mainstream publishers. For all these reasons, self-publishing is becoming a more appealing option for many writers.
Self-publishing refers to authors taking on full financial responsibility of the production, distribution, and marketing stages of a project for which they can hire individuals on a freelance basis.

A number of self-publishing platforms like Lulu and Smashwords reported an increase in sales of self-published titles starting with March 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns began. One reason for this rise is the production of ebooks. Electronic books are convenient to buy when a significant number of people spend a large portion of time online at home.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing boasts that in 2020, in India, “thousands of authors” published their work on the platform — reportedly double the number of authors from the year before.

Being a self-publisher means authors control when to publish books and make them available to the readers. For instance, summer releases were delayed by many small presses due to the pandemic. It may be that self-published authors gained audiences who were waiting for new releases during this standstill in the publishing sector.

Growth in the past 10 years

In the past 10 years, self-publishing has kept growing as an industry potentially due to ebook adoption and online publishing companies. It is difficult to trace the actual number of self-published books since some platforms like Amazon assign their own product numbers, making that data private.

But Bowker, a company which provides bibliographical information (such as ISBN data) to those working in the publishing industry, reported an increase of self-published titles in the last decade. Bowker registered 148,424 print self-published books with an additional 87,201 ebooks in 2011.

Only six years later, in 2017, the number of self-published books was more than a million, according to the company’s records. The numbers kept rising the following year, with over 1.5 million self-published books registered in Bowker’s system.

These developments indicate that self-publishing certainly has the possibility to have a permanent place in the publishing ecosystem. These new publishing practices might become appealing to authors who could produce their work and make it available to the public without any gatekeepers.The Conversation

Elizaveta Poliakova, PhD Candidate, Communications and Culture, York University, Canada

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Children Read More Challenging Books in Lockdown

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The link below is to an article that concludes that children read more challenging books while in lockdown.

For more visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/29/children-read-longer-more-challenging-books-in-lockdown

Fiction and memoirs were covering health way before the COVID-19 pandemic

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Dostoyevsky’s story ‘The Double’ explores the uncanny theme of a replica of oneself, but today’s literary foes are often amorphous ones like environmental degradation.
(Shutterstock)

Cynthia Spada, University of Victoria

Beyond the viral contagion of COVID-19, the pandemic’s accompanying social and economic hardships have challenged many people’s physical and mental wellness. Over the past year of navigating living in a pandemic, it’s become clear that relationships matter to health: relationships between body and mind, between neighbours and between individuals and their societies.

Literature was dissecting these connections long before the outbreak. Recent memoirs, non-fiction, fiction, poetry and graphic novels related to physical and mental health examine not just the fragility of individuals but how individuals relate to social and power structures like capitalism, racism or colonialism. Writers have also explored how people’s social roles and identities shape their relationships to narrative itself. As American poet and memoirist Anne Boyer writes in her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, The Undying, “I do not want to tell the story of cancer in the way that I have been taught to tell it.”

For several years, I have been researching, writing about and teaching literary texts related to maladies like depression, substance abuse and cancer. I’m interested in how narratives about health published today explore the interdependence of bodies and their environments in a way that may teach us important lessons during the pandemic, and beyond it.

The ‘literature of madness’

Since the 1960s, critiques of medical education, medical ethics and the role of narrative in healing have meant an emerging awareness of how the medical field can be allied with literature.

Some medical schools are requiring students to take literature courses to become more adept with reading patients’ stories; some students take my contemporary literature course at University of Victoria to satisfy a medical school course requirement. The convergence of these two fields is helping to disrupt the canonical “literature of madness.”

American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, c. 1900.
(Library of Congress/Wikimedia)

Starting in the 1970s, mental illness became a hot topic in literature departments. Books like Shoshana Felman’s Writing and Madness and Lillian Feder’s Madness in Literature marked the new interest.

In “Literature of Madness” courses at various universities, students studied Dostoyevsky’s The Double, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

These health stories pit mentally ill characters against individual antagonists like husbands, mothers, doctors and nurses, or, fighting oneself as seen through the ancient literary theme of the double or dopplegänger (as in Dostoyevsky’s tale). Yet some critics have also explored how these narratives examine individuals battling formidable but intangible foes, and thus comment on social ills: For example, patriarchy in The Bell Jar
and “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Social ills

Many recent health narratives today are questioning how well-being is damaged by social determinants of health like income inequality and racism. They are also examining how health relates to phenomena like capitalism and climate change, which are elusive but all-pervasive.

Cover of 'The Undying.'
‘The Undying’ by Anne Boyer.
(Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

For instance, Boyer damns the American health-care system, with its outrageous costs and lack of guaranteed sick leave, but also capitalism as a whole. For her, like Susan Sontag, cancer infuses culture as much as human bodies, but economic pressures also cast a huge shadow.

Blending personal experience and big-picture analysis can be found in other recent health memoirs. In The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, American writer Leslie Jamison discusses her own experiences of alcoholism as a white woman alongside the racism of the American criminal justice system. As she observes: “White addicts get their suffering witnessed. Addicts of colour get punished.”

The best-selling essay collection A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Tuscarora writer Alicia Elliott, examines
how systematic oppression of Indigenous communities is linked to depression.
Her settler therapist can’t understand why she’s depressed, and none of her self-help books actually help.

She writes of one, “There is nothing in the book about the importance of culture, nothing about intergenerational trauma, racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia.”

This interest in the social determinants of health isn’t limited to non-fiction. Sabrina by American cartoonist Nick Drnaso is a 2018 graphic novel that was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Sabrina takes stock of what appears to be PTSD and depression in a political climate of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

As one character fills out a daily wellness report, the reader may realize anyone would feel depression and anxiety in such a world.

Health among the living

Meanwhile, Fady Joudah, a Palestinian American poet and practising doctor, weighs economic inequity and a lack of sustainability in “Corona Radiata,” a poem about COVID-19 published last March. “Corona Radiata” argues that we need to understand health as contingent on relationships between humans — and between humans and other living things. Joudah suggests that:

“Far and near the virus awakens

in us a responsibility

to others who will not die

our deaths, nor we theirs,

though we might …”

He’s right, if hopeful. Until the vaccine is widely distributed, public health will depend on our ability to understand ourselves as part of an inconceivably vast network.

American novelist Richard Powers’s The Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019, also unites health with responsibility. In the novel, characters challenged by physical disabilities and strokes find ways to communicate with and through nature. A scientist almost dies by suicide early in the novel before recommitting herself to loving as well as studying the trees. Environmental activism gives them purpose, even if it doesn’t heal them.

Future health stories

British writer Robert Macfarlane has proposed that the environmental crisis will continue to transform our literature and art. Many recent works support his idea. In particular, the latest health literature fuses various genres, including memoir, biography, reportage, literary and cultural criticism, science writing and prose poetry.

The new health literature also reminds us that our health and the planet’s are inextricably linked. In the near future, this genre is likely to increasingly address the impact of climate change on our physical and mental well-being, such as the rise in eco-anxiety. I think we’ll see a blending of literature, medicine and environmental studies more and more often.

Some researchers have noted a link between reading and longevity in individuals. Reading health literature may spur us to support longevity for the Earth too.The Conversation

Cynthia Spada, Sessional Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Victoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

8 ways business managers can use fiction to prepare for the uncertain reality of coronavirus

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It’s a brave new business world, so turning to novelists can help explore possible future scenarios.
(Shutterstock)

Nada Elnahla, Carleton University and Ruth McKay, Carleton University

Reading fiction has always been, for many, a source of pleasure and a means to be transported to other worlds. But that’s not all. Businesses can use novels to consider possible future scenarios, study sensitive workplace issues, develop future plans and avoid unplanned problematic events — all without requiring a substantial budget.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many business leaders have learned how important it is for businesses to consider a wide range of possible outcomes and to enhance organizational adaptability. Relying on analyzing or projecting trends and extending what business leaders usually do is no longer enough to assure future success. When management is poorly prepared for the unexpected, businesses start getting into trouble.

Scenario planning, therefore, helps businesses keep themselves flexible and move quickly with market shifts. Scenario planning is a series of potential stories or possible alternate futures in which today’s decisions may play out. Such planning can help managers assess how they or their employees should respond in different potential situations.

How businesses can use novels

Unfortunately, scenario planning requires time and resources. And depending on its use, such as for an investigation, budgeting or legal matters, it can also require collecting sensitive data. That can include employees’ personal experiences of sexual, discriminatory or psychological harassment, suicide, mental health, drug abuse, etc.

The more sensitive the needed data is, the more difficult it is to collect while ensuring employee privacy. This is where literary texts come in.

A person reading at a table.
Novels can offer creative insight and wisdom to business managers.
(Helena Lopes/Unsplash)

As sources for possible future scenarios capable of providing strategic foresight, or producing alternative future plans, novels can also help businesses create dialogue on difficult and even taboo subjects.

Novels are, therefore, capable of helping managers become better, providing them with creative insight and wisdom. Science fiction can provide a means to explore morality tales, a warning of possible futures, in an attempt to help us avoid or rectify that future.

Brave new business world

Our research
uses Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World to explore possible scenarios related to situations that are usually kept confidential, such as employees’ mental health issues and drug use or abuse. We examined how employers encounter uncertainty around the impact that legalizing cannabis could have on the work environment, and ways to consider such potential effects.

Brave New World is set in a dystopian future and has been adapted numerous times, most recently into a 2020 TV series. It portrays a dystopic civilization whose members are shaped by genetic engineering and behavioural conditioning. Their happiness is maintained by government-sanctioned drug consumption. It is a world where countries are protected by walls that keep the undesired away — an eerily familiar scenario to Donald Trump’s promise of building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

'Brave New World' book
Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’
(Shutterstock)

By reading the novel, business managers can compare the world we live in today and the path our countries and corporations are on to the fictional events in the novel. This can help them pay attention to and address less comfortable, and sometimes often neglected, sensitive workplace issues that need to be considered when planning for the future.

For example, in Brave New World, the consumption of the drug “soma” becomes the norm upon which life is founded. When soma is taken away, individuals can no longer face their reality and they end up welcoming death.

Brave New World offers workplace leaders a look at what could happen if employees’ wellness, mental health or drug use are disregarded, and lead to isolation, absence, resignation or, in dire circumstances, suicide.

8-step action plan

To study sensitive workplace issues that could help generate new knowledge, lead to envisioning ways to act appropriately and develop future strategies, business managers can follow these steps:

  1. Form a team of managers and an HR representative who is aware of company policies and ethics protocols, and is in direct contact with employees.
  2. The team then decides which workplace issue(s) the organization needs to study.
  3. The team chooses a literary text, such as a novel, that discusses those issues.
  4. Each member of the team reads the literary text on their own before discussing it together in at least one session.
  5. The team researches the chosen workplace topics inside the organization and outside (for example, laws and regulations related to each issue).
  6. The team identifies insightful sections.
  7. The team analyzes the chosen extracts.
  8. The team writes a report with recommendations on workplace conditions and how best to improve them.

Reading has surged during lockdown. But literary works can provide us with more than a leisurely pastime. For businesses, novels represent a legitimate way to study the workplace, and this is accomplished by comparing the path our countries and corporations are on today to fictional events.The Conversation

Nada Elnahla, PhD Candidate, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University and Ruth McKay, Associate Professor, Management and Strategy, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

John Keats: how his poems of death and lost youth are resonating during COVID-19

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John Keats by Joseph Severn (1819).
National Portrait Gallery

Richard Marggraf-Turley, Aberystwyth University

In John Keats’ poems, death crops up 100 times more than the future, a word that appears just once in the entirety of his work. This might seem appropriate on the 200th anniversary of the death of Keats, who was popularly viewed as the young Romantic poet “half in love with easeful death”.

Death certainly touched Keats and his family. At the age of 14, he lost his mother to tuberculosis. In 1818, he nursed his younger brother Tom as he lay dying of the same disease.

After such experiences, when Ludolph, the hero of Keats’ tragedy, Otho the Great, imagines succumbing to “a bitter death, a suffocating death”, Keats knew what he was writing about. And then, aged just 25, on February 23 1821, Keats himself died of tuberculosis in Rome.

Life sliding by

His preoccupation with death doesn’t tell the whole story, however. In life, Keats was vivacious, funny, bawdy, pugnacious, poetically experimental, politically active, and above all forward-looking.

He was a young man in a hurry, eager to make a mark on the literary world; even if – as a trained doctor – he was all too conscious of the body’s vulnerability to mortal shocks. These two very different energies coalesce in one of his best loved poems, written in January 1818 when the poet was in the bloom of health:

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be is a poem of personal worry, according to biographer Nicholas Roe. In it, Keats is anxious that he won’t have time to achieve poetic fame or fall in “unreflecting love”, and these fears and self-doubts take him to the brink.

But as brinks go, this one doesn’t seem all that bad. The poem is romantic with a small “r” – wide-eyed, dramatic, sentimental – its vision of finality, of nothingness, gorgeous in its desolation, and all-importantly painless. Who can read those final lines without themselves feeling a pull to swooning death, half in love with it, as Keats professed to be?

That’s what I used to think, at any rate. Lately, in the pandemic, I’ve begun to read this poem rather differently. Lensed through long months of lockdown, the sonnet’s existential anxieties seem less abstract, grand and performative, and more, well, human.

It’s a poem that will resonate with the youth who are cooped up indoors, physically isolated, unable to meet and mingle, agonisingly aware of weeks slipping by, opportunities missed, disappointments mounting. This poem has made me almost painfully empathetic towards their plight.

Painting of a young John Keats reading a book.
John Keats by Joseph Severn, painted posthumously (1821-1823).
National Portrait Gallery, London

The sonnet’s fears of a future laid to waste are shared by whole generations whose collective mental health is under siege. In his last surviving letter, written two years after the sonnet while dying in Rome, Keats records a “feeling of my real life having past”, a conviction that he was “leading a posthumous existence”. How many of us are experiencing similar thoughts at the moment?

Illness and isolation

Of all the Romantics, Keats perhaps knew most about mental suffering. He grew up in Moorgate, just across from Bethlem Hospital, which was known to London and the world as Bedlam. Before he turned to poetry, Keats trained at Guy’s hospital, London, where he not only witnessed first-hand the horrors of surgery in a pre-anaesthetic age but also tended to patients on what was called the lunatic ward.

It was all too much for him. Traumatised by the misery and pain he felt he could do little to alleviate, in 1816 he threw medicine in for the pen. His experiences at Guy’s, though, and the empathy he developed there, found their way into his writing. For instance, in Hyperion, his medical knowledge helps him to inhabit the catatonic state of “gray-hair’d Saturn”, who sits in solitude, “deep in the shady sadness of a vale”, despairing after being deposed by the Olympian gods. The vignette is a moving image of isolation and enervation that speaks to us today:


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion

As for lockdown, Keats was no stranger to its pressures and deprivations. During periods of illness in Hampstead in 1819 – precursor symptoms of tuberculosis – he was reluctant to venture out, isolating himself. In October 1820, he set sail for Italy in the hope warmer climes would save his lungs. On arrival, his ship was put into strict quarantine for ten days. In letters to his friends, Keats described being “in a sort of desperation”, adding, “we cannot be created for this sort of suffering”.

Keats was a poet of his age, his own social, cultural and medical milieu. And yet, on the bicentenary of his death, he’s also – more than ever, perhaps – a poet of ours. A poet of lockdown, frustration, disappointment, fears … and even hope.

Because even in those last, scarcely imaginable weeks in Rome, 200 years ago, holed up in a little apartment at the foot of the Spanish Steps, he never quite gave up on the future, never relinquished his dreams of love and fame.The Conversation

Richard Marggraf-Turley, Professor of English Literature, Aberystwyth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.