Louise Stern

Gerontological Social Work in Action introduces "anti-oppression gerontology" (AOG), a critical approach to social work with older adults, their families, and communities. AOG principles are applied to direct and indirect practice and a range of topics of relevance to social work practice in the context of a rapidly aging and increasingly diverse world. Weaving together stories from diverse older adults, theories, research, and practical tools, this unique textbook prompts social workers to think differently and push back against oppressive forces. It pays attention to issues, realities, and contexts that are largely absent in social work education and gerontological practice, including important developments in our understanding of age/ism; theories of aging and social work; sites and sectors of health and social care; managing risk and frailty; moral, ethical and legal questions about aging including medical assistance in dying; caregiving; dementia and citizenship; trauma; and much more. This textbook should be considered essential reading for social work students new to or seeking to specialize in aging, as well as those interested in the application of anti-oppressive principles to working with older adults and researching later life.

Gerontological Social Work in Action introduces "anti-oppression gerontology" (AOG), a critical approach to social work with older adults, their families, and communities. AOG principles are applied to direct and indirect practice and a range of topics of relevance to social work practice in the context of a rapidly aging and increasingly diverse world. Weaving together stories from diverse older adults, theories, research, and practical tools, this unique textbook prompts social workers to think differently and push back against oppressive forces. It pays attention to issues, realities, and contexts that are largely absent in social work education and gerontological practice, including important developments in our understanding of age/ism; theories of aging and social work; sites and sectors of health and social care; managing risk and frailty; moral, ethical and legal questions about aging including medical assistance in dying; caregiving; dementia and citizenship; trauma; and much more. This textbook should be considered essential reading for social work students new to or seeking to specialize in aging, as well as those interested in the application of anti-oppressive principles to working with older adults and researching later life.

Siblings Ismael, Rosie and Cristina are deaf, and so are many in their Maya village. The deaf and hearing alike communicate in sign language, forming a tightly-knit community with an unsophisticated, simple lifestyle. But when Ismael gets into a fight at the local fiesta and flees the village, leaving Rosie and Cristina to fend for themselves, the daily rhythms of village life are disrupted, and all that they trust in comes under threat. Ismael and His Sisters is a remarkable debut novel from the acclaimed author of Chattering. It conjures up a world set apart, made visceral through its concentrated language, where sign language bridges exterior and interior worlds and gives a physical shape to the way we experience the world. It explores the interplay between the powerful forces within us and the dark elemental forces beyond our control, exposing the 'bottomless, hostile ocean' in which we all flounder. This is an extraordinary novel about the power of familial bonds, the barriers we build out of language, the dark elemental forces that threaten to overwhelm us, and above all, what it is like to be human.

Louise Stern's stories are peopled with brave young girls, out to party, travel the world, go a little bit wild. The one thing that marks them out from their peers is that they have grown up deaf. They communicate with the outside world via a complicated mixture of sign language, lip-reading, note-scribbling, guesswork and instinct. Yet they are full of daring, ready for adventures that take them into unfamiliar places and strange, cock-eyed relationships with people whose actions they observe but never wholly understand. It is this sense of dislocation from common experience that marks out Louise Stern's original voice. She is fully engaged in the world we recognize and share, but the way she observes it sets her apart. Her eyes are keen; she notices things we would never see; she is quick to judge, wary, suspicious and vulnerable. She experiences the world like a voyeur, always watching, yet able to retreat to an interior silence that nobody from the outside can ever reach.