Abstract
Online illness stories (and, arguably, other online stories as well) do not simply adhere to or demonstrate the increasingly identifiable generic conventions of electronic media but also contain the potential to play with their form as particular stories and perspectives demand. Through an investigation of the My Cancer blog, hosted on National Public Radio’s Web site from 2006 to 2009, I will examine how blogging narrative negotiates the paradoxical aspects of its hybrid but generic form of storytelling. Borrowing a phrase that Arthur W. Frank uses to describe the impact of story in The Wounded Storyteller, I argue that blogs such as My Cancer forward a dynamic and ambivalent model of storytelling that encourages their readers to think differently about illness and illness communities.
Recommended Citation
Mahato, Mita
(2011)
"Virtuous Community: Online Storytelling in Leroy Sievers’s My Cancer,"
Storytelling, Self, Society: Vol. 7:
Iss.
3, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/storytelling/vol7/iss3/3