That’s the imaginative leap I make when I imagine and feel what it’s like to be you. They are excluded from my community.īut through story, we really can move from sympathy to empathy. I could have sympathy for those with ALS and could think ‘Oh, poor them, that’s awful,’ but they stay “otherized,” or different from me, and I stay safely different than them, so our worlds don’t overlap. It doesn’t cause you to have any empathy. You may have done the ice bucket challenge, posted it on Facebook, checked your likes, maybe you donated some money, which is wonderful, but you probably didn’t feel anything. We’re familiar with the letters ALS and maybe we know a little bit about Stephen Hawking or have some vague familiarity with the disease, but when doing the ice bucket challenge, did you feel anything about ALS? Probably not. Millions of us dumped buckets of ice water over our heads. Lisa Genova: As human beings, I think we’re designed to understand through story. In my most recent book about ALS, I discuss the ice bucket challenge. In ‘Still Alice,’ you beautifully captured the emotional side of what it’s like to live with Alzheimer’s.

She spent hours connecting with those who are living with Alzheimer’s to better understand how to portray Alice and tell her storyīeing Patient spoke to Genova about what drove her to write ‘Still Alice,’ how the book became a major motion picture and the latest brain health research.īeing Patient: You’re a neuroscientist, but you’re also a storyteller.

Genova wrote the book to humanize a disease that is sometimes viewed as too depressing or scary to talk about.

Genova said she used the power of storytelling to encourage people to speak about Alzheimer’s and connect with those who are living with the disease.

Eventually, ‘ Still Alice’ became an Oscar-nominated film.

After self-publishing her book and asking readers to write reviews on Amazon, a literary agent finally agreed to represent the book. everyone who was even marginally interested in thought, ‘I just don’t think the general public is going to want to read about this,'” she said. When neuroscientist Lisa Genova first pitched ‘ Still Alice’ to literary agents, she was rejected by all of them.

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