Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People

In her stirring new book, the pioneering US writer Margaret Morganroth Gullette argues that the meaning of the word burden has shifted from referring to the demanding work of care-giving (expressing empathy with the carer) on to the recipient of care. No wonder so many older people worry that they’ll become burdensome, and elder abuse is becoming so common. The Guardian

As one of the world's leading authorities on ageing and ageism, any new book from Margaret Gullette is always exciting. Here she highlights the emotional wisdom and moral imagination of old age, so very different from the narrow, demeaning public rhetorics of ageing. An essential book for our times.'
  Lynne Segal, author of Out of Time: The Pleasures & Perils of Ageing

Margaret Morganroth Gullette is one of the shining lights of age studies. For decades she has been sweeping her bright searchlight across the landscape of American social, political and popular culture to identify and analyze ageism wherever it lurks. Alix Kates Shulman, author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen and Ménage

Margaret Morganroth Gullette's take-no-prisoners book is as scathing as its subtitle, which refers both to cameras (the power of portrayal) and to guns (the very real risks of growing old in an ageist world). Wide-ranging and erudite, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People frames the struggle for age equity in the most human and compelling of terms.'
  Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

In this bracing, wide-ranging new book by a pioneer of ageing studies, every page sparkles with fresh insight and burns with apt indignation at how the 'othering' of older people operates. Gullette exhorts us to reclaim public space and defiantly shows us how. Wonderful!'
  Anne Karpf, author of How to Age

For baby-boomers (like me) this is a sobering, but also an inspiring book. Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People provides a fully developed cultural analysis, anatomizing the established habits of mind, institutional structures, and economic pressures that work to belittle and marginalize older people. The critique cuts deep, drawing together an extraordinary range of evidence from visual culture, media, social history, and literature. But Margaret Morganroth Gullette give us more than a jeremiad. Hers is a positive vision, offering many specific proposals for a movement of resistance that could encourage an epistemic shift – a new conception of life’s course, a fresh understanding of words like ‘age,’ ‘youth,’ ‘decline,’ and much more. This is a profoundly engaged, urgent work of the humanist imagination.’
  James Clifford, author of Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century

Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People penetrates far more deeply than the stock tropes about the affronts of age bias. With rich complexity Margaret Morganroth Gullette exposes ageism in many of its unusual manifestations, such as in her unusual and penetrating discussion of older farmers and world ecology.  We too easily accept aging as a burden-in-waiting, rather than as the boon of longevity our added years can be both for individuals and global society. Paul Kleyman, Director, Ethnic Elders Newsbeat, New America Media

Gullette’s many film references demonstrate her gravity as a film plus age critic and her opinion is worth seeking out Erin Trahan, The ARTery

In her books, and perhaps most sharply in this new one, Ending Ageism, Gullette awakens her readers to the ideology of ageism Robert Mundle, RobertMundle.com

Margaret Morganroth Gullette wants you to know she means the title of her new book, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People, as a wake-up slap. She calls on Americans to be more aware of how the underlying age-based prejudice damages the lives of older people and their families—while often placing ethnic elders and older women in double jeopardy of discrimination, adding a touch of gray to sexism and racism they may already endure. Paul Kleyman, New American Media

Ending Ageism, or How to Not Shoot Old People grapple[s] thoughtfully with how we [as a culture have forgotten how to value the elderly]. Tad Friend, New Yorker

Award-winning writer and cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette confronts age prejudice head on. She presents eye-opening and often frightening examples of ageism in every day society and confronts offenders and their bias. El Paso Inc. Magazine

Author sees book as a way to fight ageism,' by Cindy Cantrell Boston Globe

Ageism, And What We Can Do About It' interview with Margaret Morganroth Gullette on Wisconsin Public Radio Wisconsin Public Radio

The One Who Feeds Us All: Old Farmers and Farm Fiction Amid the Global Food Crisis’ by Margaret Morganroth Gullette Michigan Quarterly Review

Margaret Morganroth Gullette: The Anti-Ageism Revolutionist Silver Century Foundation

[An] artfully composed work...Compelling...Recognizing ageism can help us transcend our netherworlds – be they a valley in northern California, a field in Shandong, or an urban farm in Havana – and ‘emerge to see the stars. Anthropology News

Unwanted at Midlife: Not Old, but 'Too Old,'’ by Margaret Morganroth Gullette

  Los Angeles Review of Books

Gullette uses a personal, first-person voice and, in this way, masterfully weaves together personal experiences with cultural implications....[An] outstanding book. The Gerontologist

The Monument and the Wrecking Crew: Ageism and the academy,' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
  AAUP

How Does a Society Lose Respect for Experience and Age?' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
  Academe Blog

When My Mother Wanted to Die: The Neglected Issues of Ageist Undertreatment,' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette Tikkun

Ramping Up: The Problem That Went Deeper Than We Knew,' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette Silver Century

Against ‘Aging’ – How to Talk about Growing Older,' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
  Theory, Culture & Society

The ‘Christine Lagarde Memo,’ FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, from 'the Coalition,'' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
  MR Online

Brave, defiant, and startling. . . Gullette's work is both insightful and inspiring, challenging and important; moreover, her writing style [is] at once scathing, funny, sharp, witty, and down-to-earth. .. . a text that works both in small chunks and as a larger argument. . . . much needed and urgent. Feminism & Psychology

Ageist ‘Triage’ Is a Crime Against Humanity' by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/ageist-triage-covid-19 Los Angeles Review of Books

A compelling manifesto that can enable social workers and others to recognize and challenge pervasive individual and institutional ageism....As educators, social workers need to follow Morganroth Gullette’s recommendation to integrate critical analysis of age into courses, and this must include fieldwork education. Affilia