Illness, culture, and power: stories beyond the clinic

Health is not a fixed or universal state -it is subjective and shaped by historical, political, social and cultural contexts.To access these plural experiences of illness, an interdisciplinary approach is not only helpful but necessary.In various forms of literary expression, experiences of illness are depicted, expressed, and understood, in ways that resist "medical" reductionism.Medical Humanities as a field, argues that understanding of illness does not start at the clinic, but with everyday experiences of health and illness, the cultural contexts and symbolic meanings that structure how illness is perceived and lived.Medical Maladies: Stories of Disease and Cure from Indian Languages is a collection of stories on various contexts of health, illness and cure.