Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (Global Perspectives on Aging)

 Ageism tears down the structures that all humans need to age well; to end it, a symbol of resilience offers us all brisk blue-sky energy.  “Leda Antonia Machado” from “Wrinkles of the City, 2012.” Piotr Trybalski / Trybalski. Turning intimate suffering into public grievances, Ending Ageism, Or How Not to Shoot Old People effectively and beautifully argues that overcoming ageism is the next imperative social movement of our time.About the cover image:This elegant, dignified figure--Leda Machado, a Cuban old enough to have seen the Revolution--once the center of a vast photo mural, is now a fragment on a ruined wall. As people live longer lives, today’s great demotions of older people cut deeper into their self-worth and human relations, beyond the reach of law or public policy. The sudden onset of age-related shaming can occur anywhere—the shove in the street, the cold shoulder at the party, the deaf ear at the meeting, the shut-out by the personnel office or the obtuseness of a government. When the term “ageism” was coined in 1969, many problems of exclusion seemed resolved by government programs like Social Security and Medicare. In Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People, award-winning writer and cultur

"In her stirring new book, the pioneering US writer Margaret Morganroth Gullette argues that the meaning of the word burden has shifted from referring to the demanding work of care-giving (expressing empathy with the carer) on to the recipient of care. No wonder so many older people worry that they’ll become burdensome, and elder abuse is becoming so common."