Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World

This is perhaps the most significant book I've read on narrative. Narrative as a therapeutic and insight-enhancing tool is highlighted by thorough theory and enlightening examples given by the author. It is a very inspiring and moving book, woven together by the wisdom and unquestionable skills of the author. Highly recommended to anyone working with humans in crisis or distress of any sort, be it therapeutically, pedagogically or just as a fellow human being with sincere interest in what moves us, and how that movement may affect our lives in the lines of our life stories.

Gay Becker's "Disrupted Lives" deals with the normalizing ideologies of American culture which people have to confront when their ideas of normal life trajectories are "disrupted." She reports on different studies of disrupted lives and gives several examples (those of infertility and stroke victims being the most memorable). The theoretical lens Becker builds for her analysis can be extended to other areas of research wherever the analysis of "disruption" is the focus -obvious examples being stories of addiction and recovery, stories of crime and punishment, stories of religious conversion, or other more quotidian disruptions (eg. such as not finishing an academic project). In any case, this book provides a very cogent analysis of how Americans deal with the increasingly disjunctive nature of modernity American-style. One critical remark that scholars of the left may have is that Becker does not make it clear how her approach/material would address larger debates on questions of exclusion by race and class (given the overarching normative trajectory encompassed by the story of the American Dream). On the other hand, Becker gives a longish methodological appendix that explains clearly how she analyzes her narratives. This section is very valuable and offers a general enough method that can be easily extended into to other fields of research not directly covered. This book is a must read for students and scholars of sociology and anthropology whose methods are qualitative and whose findings are based on narrative analysis. I highly recommend this book!