HUMAN(e): A Radical Reimagining of Grief, Loss and Learning to Live Without
Available in stores and online now!
Written by a Queer woman of North African and Middle Eastern descent, Human(e) takes a radically non-pathology-based approach to grief and loss. In this intimate and reflective auto-ethnographic book, Bensoussan asserts that grief is a biological imperative; a life-sustaining necessity that is vital to our survival. Human(e) explores how our species has been living with, and metabolizing loss, well before there were licensed professionals and accredited institutions. Bensoussan examines the inadequacy of the idea that grief is normal, as grief goes well beyond the Western-colonial binary of normal and abnormal. Grief is human, and to grieve is to be human. Rachelle seamlessly and beautifully weaves together her vast professional expertise on grief with her own personal lived experiences of loss. Human(e) is a must read for anyone learning to live without.
"Rachelle Bensoussan’s Human(e) begins and finishes strong. Bensoussan gifts each of us with a profoundly decolonized approach to living without. By debunking myths and traditionally held beliefs about grief, loss, and the grieving process, Bensoussan advocates for a radical move away from the harm of pathologizing grief towards a grief literacy that creates safer language, and time and space for our different experiences of mourning to exist. Human(e) uncovers how institutions, curriculum, systemic discrimination, practices and policies, and access inequities impact our lived experience with grief. I am grateful for this book. It has already helped me unpack some of my deepest fears around loss."
– Dr. Jill Andrew, PhD, *Co-Editor, Body Stories: In and Out and With and Through Fat and Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament