Book Review: Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other? By confronting pain--real and imagined, her own and others'--Jamison uncovers a personal and cultural urgency to feel. She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory--from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration--in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.

Many bloggers who opinions and reviews I trust raved about this book, so I just HAD to read it to see what all the hype was about. Plus I love essays, so that was a big plus.

This book started out with Leslie Jamison writing about her role in acting with teaching in training Drs on how to be empathic. My first reaction when reading this was, they teach that I wonder how some of the Drs that I have had got past that one. I have had bad experiences with some Dr’s. Can you tell?

ANYWAY she goes into the role about how they have a script and stuff and how they rate DRS on empathy. At first I was like, I wonder how this book got to be so popular? Then I kept on reading, and Leslie Jamison does a good job on turning the topic of empathy on its head. I love how she takes what happened to her in her life and then tries to apply empathy to it. Like in one essay she talks about how she was attacked in a central American country and while a lot of people would end up putting the whole country on their shit list she writes and explores how she could be more empathic to the person who attacked her. I must admit that that one was my favorite as I have spent some time in Africa and while I was never attacked, After reading this I also feel that I missed the empathy boat.

After reading this I have found myself trying to be more empathic to people around me. After all there are different sides to a situation. Who is to say one side is more valid than another?

I have recommended this book to everyone I know. I feel that lots of people will benefit from this book and the over lying message. This is definitely going to be one of my top 10 books this year.