Memory Circles

Abstract

Each summer, Camp Anuenue is in session. Billed as an opportunity for young people with cancer to have a “normal” camping experience, this camp provides a sense of community and a needed break from hospital stays. Despite increasing survival rates for young people with cancer, a number of children and teenagers die each year. However, because Camp Anuenue is designed as a place to have fun, discussions of death and dying are often marginalized. Following a social drama and outpouring of communal grief in 1992, camp administrators implemented a grieving ritual. During the next four years, there was a struggle regarding where and how grief should be enacted. As the objective of the ritual gradually shifted from communal grieving to sharing favorite moments from camp, young people found more informal and individual ways of processing grief.

Inviting the Breach: Confronting Homophobia in the Name of Social Justice

“…Social drama illuminated the interpersonal and intergroup hostilities among the Anlo-Ewe of Ghana (Avorgbedor, 1999), and Farrell (1989) compared the media spectacle of the 1984 Winter Olympics to a social drama. Rich (2002) drew on social drama theory and ritual to analyze the rift and communal grief expressed among the counselors and young people at a cancer camp.…”