PRAISE FOR THE BOOK AND DOCUMENTARY
“These are
difficult stories to tell, those of people caught in a precarious state between
life and death. And these are stories
that must be told and treasured. Yet
amid our advancements in treating diseases, we seem to lose our way at times in
treating human beings. Cancer Stories
is a truly remarkable book that smartly and appropriately focuses on anecdotes
and details of those living with cancer.
The stories will make you laugh out loud, shed a tear and hold those
closest to you a little tighter.” Dr. Sanjay Gupta, senior medical correspondent,
CNN
“Cancer
Stories is wonderful. It’s
well-made, moving and sensitive. I
applaud the students for their work.”
Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
and director of the acclaimed PBS series The
Civil War and Baseball
DESCRIPTION
Cancer takes a
different path through each body, each life. One man fails a
driver’s license vision exam, which leads to a positive test for
leukemia. A woman loses fifty pounds, allowing her to detect a lump in
her breast.
To produce Cancer
Stories: Lessons in Love, Loss and Hope, students at West Virginia
University’s journalism school shadowed eight cancer patients for two
years, documenting their struggles in writing, photography and on
videotape. Students observed surgeries and treatments at a cancer center
in
In the book, the
story of each patient makes up one chapter, accompanied by a photo essay.
These stories are told as narrative journalism, emphasizing narrative and
character and detailed scenes without violating journalistic standards of
accuracy. Like the written stories, each collection of photographs are tied together by a common theme or narrative. Some
of the photo essays are closely related to the writing about the patient; others
follow their own arcs.
The documentary,
which won a regional Emmy in 2004, focuses on five patients, meshing interviews
with patients, family members, friends and medical care providers, with
dramatic and intimate footage of hospital and home scenes. A DVD copy is
included with the book.
Order from the
West Virginia University Press: http://www.wvupress.com/
Order from
Amazon: www.amazon.com