The Death Class: A True Story About Life by Erica Hayasaki

Review: Erica Hayasaki, a journalist for the “Los Angeles Times,” shadowed Dr. Norma Bowe for four years as Dr. Bowe taught her “Death in Perspective” class at Kean University. Dr. Bowe’s class includes discussions on what occurs biologically when a person is dying of natural causes, trips to a cemetery, prison and end-of-life hospital, and assignments like writing a goodbye letter to someone you know who has died and writing your own bucket list. The interspersed assignments and real responses from the class were interesting and thought-provoking.  The book also included the life stories of a few of Dr. Bowe’s student which helped make the book more about living than dying and illustrating different ways people deal with death but Dori & I both agree that it would have been better with shorter stories about more students rather than singling out just a few. However, there is no question that both of us were impressed by the remarkable woman that is Dr. Norma Bowe and we were glad to have the opportunity to read about her.