Stages: On Dying, Working, and Feeling

by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

Poetry. Art. Perfomance Studies. Literary Nonficition. Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, loss, and taking the time to feel one's feelings. In the months leading up to the performance, the artist navigates her twenties--and art and life converge in unexpected ways. Weaving between oral history and poetic prose, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has created a stirring work of hybrid nonfiction that takes us behind the scenes of artmaking and caregiving. Melding curiosity, humility, playfulness, and self-deprecation, STAGES is an inquiry into the work it takes to sustain a meaningful life. "STAGES is one of a very few recent books I have read that feels truly revolutionary, in both form and in content. It consists of documentary materials assembled, in a style somewhere between Svetlana Alexievich and André Breton, by a young writer, while staging a theater production in a nursing home. In a series of eye-opening interviews, she talks to housekeepers and nurses from Jamaica and Ghana about ghosts and family structure; to a clinical nutritionist, who explains how she helps people stop eating food, after a lifetime of eating food. Basically we're on a tour of a parallel institutionalized world of aging and dying which has been zealously cordoned off from the rest of American life, and which is not without its Kafkaesque elements, but our guide, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, is so humane, curious and visionary that the overall effect is energizing and uplifting. Reading STAGES gave me the revelatory feeling of looking at something I'd been dreading, and seeing that it was actually OK, and vital, and a major part of life. STAGES brings humanity, humor, and a strong visual sensibility to a taboo subject, with exhilarating results. It expanded the way I think about family, theater, and a 'good life.'"--Elif Batuman "Caring work, emotional labor, and end-of-life care are useful abstractions; this wonderful book that weaves together interviews with nursing home workers and the author's own reflections on life, death, and making art, fills them with life. Given that we all die, and that most of us will care for others and require care ourselves in that process, everyone should read this book, sit with it, and absorb its lessons."--Kathi Weeks "STAGES is the kind of story-telling that we need more of. Care is so fundamental to who we are and the values we all share, and yet is too often hidden away rather than celebrated. Whether we are caregivers for our own family members, or whether we are professional caregivers, this role stitches together the very fabric of our society, connects generations and cultures. This story is told beautifully in STAGES."--Ai-Jen Poo, Executive Director of The National Domestic Workers Alliance and Director of Caring Across Generations

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Art

126 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2020

About the author

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff is a writer working at the intersections of oral history, performance, and public health. She is the editor of the forthcoming Our Red Book (Simon & Schuster, 2022) and of The New York Times best-selling My Little Red Book (Hachette, 2009). She co-edited The Feminist Utopia Project (Feminist Press, 2015) with Alexandra Brodsky. Her book Stages (Thick Press, 2020) is a hybrid collection of writing and interviews with end-of-life care workers that “feels truly revolutionary, in both form and in content” (Elif Batuman).

Rachel teaches nonfiction writing at Yale University and co-directs a memoir program for seniors with Caitlin Ryan O’Connell and many friends through the Bushwick Starr theater. She is online at www.itsrachelkuadernalebuff.com and, occasionally, https://rachelkaudernalebuff.substack....

Reviews

[Ren He · Rating 5 out of 5]

sobbed on the subway while reading this lol. took two wrong trains home. short and sweet and perfect! ty sean + rina!

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and perfect

[Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful read. New-to-me perspectives on death, preparing for dying, grief, friendship, community, art-making, and love.

It’s so touching and human. Worth your time!

[Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

totally lovely little book about aging, end of life care, artmaking, and the systems surrounding all….honestly wish it was twice as long. great design as well

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about putting on a play in a care home with interviews with staff around care, death and dying. So tender, I loved the bit where she says that all the words in the play had gravitas when spoken by the older people.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and fast read on living, aging, dying, and caring about each other through all of it.

[Micah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this feels like wrapping yourself in an old, soft blanket and finally letting the tears fall after a very long day. Recounting her time as 'writer in residence of a nursing home' alongside her personal encounters with grief, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has compiled a touching multimedia collage of images, poetry, vows, and interviews with care workers at the nursing home.

Stages gently asks the intimate questions most of us can't bear to think about: What happens when we are dying? Who will care for us?
How can we process death when it feels like there is no time to grieve?
Despite everything, where can we find moments of hope, kindness, and even joy?

I would recommend this incredible work of creative nonfiction to anyone seeking comfort sans escapism.

see my staff recommendation here:
www.harvard.com/book/stages/

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simple, moving multimedia book around making art with the elderly and their caregivers, confronting end-of-life stages, and caring as a means to build resilience and cultivate vulnerability. Grief comes in many forms, and I'm grateful for this book's gentle nudge to face it instead of hide from it.

[Olivia de Jager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone needs to read this. I sobbed through it all.

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of thoughtful tenderness about the creativity of care for the elderly and dying. Stages holds your hand on a journey to our final destination, walking in the company of caregivers who share and shape the naked moments of the heart. Reverent about the meaning of aging, Nalebuff asks us to consider our attitudes about the end stages of life. She worked as artist in residence at a home for aged and did a theater performance based on oral histories with the staff of the facility, asking how they are able to bear up under the gravity of death which is so much part of their work. As one nurse says, "Sometimes we cannot set aside time to celebrate" those who have passed. And few think to celebrate the caregivers who are on hand at all times. Impending death imbues every moment with value, and Nalebuff has opened a window for us into that precious store of wisdom.

[Akela Morinaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book and one I think I will reflect on for some time.
Beautifully and rawly explores how we care for people at the end of their lives, how we can care for caregivers, and how we can approach grieving and death as a community and society.