title: The Empathy Exams: Essays
author:  Leslie Jamison 
description: *Starred Review* Jamison wrote about wounded women in her powerful novel, The Gin Closet (2010), and she pursues that subject in this collection of gutsy essays. But the line of inquiry that connects these riveting works of acute description and exacting moral calculus, these amalgams of memoir and risky investigative adventures is Jamisons attempt to discern and define empathy in diverse and dicey situations. She begins with an account of her experiences working as a medical actor, performing as patients with baffling ailments that medical students must diagnose, encounters that deliver the realization that empathy requires humility and imagination. She discloses her own medical travails and asks, When does empathy actually reinforce the pain it wants to console? Jamisons mission to put empathy to the test is more covert and even more provocative in her wrenching chronicles of drug-war-ravaged Mexico; Nicaragua, where a man attacks her and breaks her nose; a silver mine in Bolivia; and a Gang Tour in Los Angelesexplorations that inject guilt into the equation. A tough, intrepid, scouring observer and vigilant thinker, she generates startling and sparking extrapolations and analysis. On the prowl for truth and intimate with pain, Jamison carries forward the fierce and empathic essayistic tradition as practiced by writers she names as mentors, most resonantly James Agee and Joan Didion. --Donna Seaman
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  A C Praat
  
  
  Stop Looking
  
  
  
  
  
  Sequel to The Empathy Code
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  First published by WordPlay Wellington 2019
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2019 by A C Praat
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or
  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
  recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the
  publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or
  distribute it by any other means without permission.
  
  
  
  
  
  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
  portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to
  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  A C Praat asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover design by Rachel Stevens
  
  
    
  
  
  Printed by www.yourbooks.co.nz
  
  
    
  
  
  All paper stocks used in the production of this book wer