Self-Care, Autoimmunity, and the Limits of Individualism

This paper examines contemporary literature by women writers with chronic illnesses to consider how both the lived experience and metaphor of autoimmunity structure ideas about self-care. Poetry and life writing by Meghan O'Rourke interrogates the wellness industry's consumerist and consuming approach to self-care for the chronically ill. Nafissa Thompson-Spires uses fiction to juxtapose that model with a Black feminist tradition of self-care that privileges relational forms of well-being. Ultimately, this paper locates in both writers' work the urgent need for sustainable models of self-care that go beyond individualist understandings of illness and wellness.