First Books Month : Kate Sweeney reads from and talks about American afterlife

Abstract

This week on The Missouri Review Soundbooth we continue our First Books Series by talking to Atlanta-based nonfiction writer, Kate Sweeney. Listen in as Sweeney reads excerpts from and then discusses her new book, American afterlife: encounters in the customs of mourning. American afterlife (University of Georgia Press) explores the experiences of individual Americans involved with death in a culture where even discussing such things is practically taboo. These chapters follow ordinary people making memorial choices as well as the purveyors of those choices to investigate how we memorialize our dead, where these practices came from, and what this says about us.