No Better Than the Rest of Them

No Better Than the Rest of Them is a medical memoir written in flash. Across the manuscript’s four distinct sections, I attempt to come to grips with what it means to care for someone who is ill—someone who has fallen victim to medical abuse—while maintaining a job in an inherently neglectful healthcare system. To do this, I deploy two distinct narrative techniques: 1) the use of a peripheral perspective, which affords me a participatory role in the story even as it also acknowledges my alienated status to it, and 2) frequent shifts between first and second person throughout, which lends to varying levels of narrative distance and implication on the part of both the narrator and the reader. Combined, both techniques allow me to address the abuse my girlfriend experienced at the hands of her healthcare providers while also investigating the healthcare system and my own role in it. The aim, then, of this collection, is to inspire positive change in the U.S. systems that govern health by way of encouraging self-reflection on the part of the reader and calling attention to the subtle ways in which medical abuse is propagated.

Embargo status: Restricted until 06/2027. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.