Welcome to Spark My Muse!
Every Friday is a conversation with a guest. My guest today is Erika Hayasaki. She teaches workshops in nonfiction writing and classes in digital storytelling at the University of California, Irvine, where she is an associate professor in the Literary Journalism Program.
In her career as a journalist Erika’s seen many tragedies, but it was her involvement with Norma Bowe, the instructor of an unorthodox and very popular course at Kean University called “Death Class”, that showed her a completely different way to think about death and living and initiated her celebrated book project by that same name.
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Her book based on the Death Class.
SHOW NOTES
MIN 1 [Feb gift giveaway Facebook.com/sparkmymuse]
MIN 3 Erika’s journalism career and background.
MIN 7 Her spiritual religious context and upbringing / objectivity
MIN 12 How she was introduced to “Death Class” at Kean University with Norma Bowe,
and how the book about “Death Class” came about.
MIN 16 Field trips, general interest, fear of death, loss of a loved one, coming close to death are reasons people take the class.
MIN 19 Seeing an autopsy and death up close and how that changes you.
MIN 21 A renewed appreciation and outlook on life and the preciousness of living. Less anxiety around death and disaster after the class.
MIN 23 How we get exposed to death or stressful things in life and how we can process the scary things in life better.
MIN 25 Death anxiety is relieved more when people process through the ideas around death.
MIN 26 The afterlife and processing death in social contexts.
MIN 27 The “Death Salon” or “Death Cafe” or “Death Dinners”
exploring with art, socially, and with food the concepts and reality of mortality.
MIN 29 Alternative burial movement happening. We have become removed from the entire process like we used to be from the birth process.
MIN 30 How we grieve a loved one. How the Amish care from their dead.
MIN 32 Being with someone as they die.
MIN 34 CLICK for death salon reading list
MIN 35 Her uncle’s near death experiences.
Thank you for listening!
I hope you come back Wednesday for a new episode called Soul School.
If you enjoyed the show, please poke around and listen to other episodes and share the show with a friend!
xo
-Lisa
