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The Empathy Exams Summary

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Emily Gustafson ENGL 208 Prof. Budd 11/10/15 Book Review: The Empathy Exams Leslie Jamison’s first nonfiction book, The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press, 2014), is a smart and emotionally -wrenching collection of essays on the theme of empathy and human suffering. Jamison’s own self-awareness and presence in each of the essays provides the common thread the collection needs to keep it from becoming overwhelming or directionless. “Part of me has always craved a pain so visible,” she writes in the first essay, “that everyone would have to know.” Jamison’s frustrations with and struggle to find the balance between doing the right thing by empathizing and her own self-pity or questions about her obligations to others made this collection ring true..

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