The Death Class

October 21, 2013
In this brisk, journalistic endeavor, full of case studies of violent death, a Los Angeles Times reporter chronicles her years shadowing Dr. Norma Bowe, the “professor of death” at Kean University in Union, N.J. Bowe’s class, Death in Perspective, had a three-year waiting list. Journalist Hayasaki was drawn to Bowe’s class as a way of making sense of “death’s mercilessness and meaning,” and in memory of her own dear friend who was shot and killed by a jealous boyfriend when they attended high school in the mid-1990s in Lynnwood, Wash. In the course of dogging the professor over the semester, involving visits to cemeteries, a hospice, death row at a state prison, mortuary, and psych hospital, as well as thoughtful writing assignments such as composing a goodbye letter to her dead friend, Hayasaki unearths the wrenching personal stories of these traumatized students—and that of Bowe herself. The product of parents who never wanted her and beat her, Bowe grew up largely in the care of a doting grandmother; she found the career of a psychiatric nurse and teacher enormously therapeutic, and it also suited her compassionate temperament. Hayasaki’s studies of the suicidal and mentally ill seem clinical and unrelenting, and there is an unsettling prurience in these stories of emotional cataclysm; nevertheless, the book helps make possible necessary conversations about death.

Starred review from November 1, 2013
Year after year, Norma Bowe faces a waiting list of students wanting to get into her death class at a college in New Jersey. Beyond the probing about last wills and good-bye letters and class trips to mortuaries and cemeteries is the underlying truth that a good, long stare at death can trigger a deeper appreciation of life. Damaged herself by a tormented childhood, Bowe attracts others who are damaged and consciously and unconsciously looking for answers. Award-winning journalist Hayasaki spent four years following Bowe and her class and details the journey of a young woman's vigil against her mother's suicide attempts, a young man's effort to save his schizophrenic brother, and a former gangbanger's effort to leave behind his violent past. Along the way, she explores her own adolescent trauma when a close friend was killed. Following Erik Erikson's teachings on the stages of life, the class works through assignments that require them to write a bucket list, a letter to their younger selves, and their own eulogies as they ponder life lessons and consider the reluctance to confront death. Hayasaki offers a completely engaging look at death and the meaning of life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)