Rewinding Frankenstein and the body-machine: organ transplantation in the dystopian young adult fiction series Unwind

This article follows one of the young protagonists in the series, who is entirely constructed from donated tissue, and analyses how Shusterman explores the complicated relationship between body and mind and between self and other as the teenager matures into an adult. It will be shown that, by framing the story of a transplanted individual along the lines of a coming-of-age narrative, Shusterman inter-relates the acceptance of a donor organ with the transitional space of adolescence and positions the quest for embodied selfhood at the centre of both developments. By highlighting the interconnections between medical discourse and a literary tradition, the potential contribution of the series to the treatment and understanding of post-transplant patients will be addressed.

Source: Medical Humanities - November 23, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Wohlmann, A., Steinberg, R. Tags: Electronic pages - Science fiction and medical humanities Source Type: research