Sociologists and co-authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans join The Stacks to talk about their book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels. The book follows four people whose bodies go unclaimed after their deaths, and how and why this happens. We also discuss how Pamela and Stefan think ethically about reporting and writing about the dead, why being claimed matters, and how they took care of themselves while spending eight years with this subject matter.
The Stacks Book Club selection for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss the book on March 27th with Elise Hu.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon
- The Unclaimed by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans
- We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian
- Unclaimedpersons.org
- Crown Publishing
- Amanda Cook
- “LA County buries 1,937 of its residents in a shared grave, unclaimed but not forgotten” (Los Angeles Daily News)
- The Mortuary Science Department at Cypress College
- Death of Diana, Princess of Wales
- Ashes to Admin by Evie King
- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
- Oprah Winfrey
- Barack Obama
- Vivek Murthy
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