Tenderly Lift Me

Book excerpt: Those who teach the literature of medicine have questioned why there appears to be a lack of rich materials connecting nursing with the humanities. Tenderly Life Me is a compassionate and complex combination of biography, photography, and poetry that gives nurses a voice. Author and poet Jeanne Bryner has gathered these biographical sketches of remarkable nurses, each accompanied by poetry, photographs and drawings. The complete text becomes a multigenre presentation, with each sketch commenting on and informing the others. This is the first book in the Literature and Medicine Series that concentrates on nurses' voices and their experiences with providing health care. It enhances and extends perspectives on how health care is understood and delivered by recognizing nurses as the primary care givers.