title: Tricksterdom in narratives of young adult cancer: performances of uncertainty, subversion, and possibility.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  As people with cancer attempt the difficult task of giving voice to life with illness, they often turn to mythic figures and stories (e.g., when people talk about battling cancer or embarking on a journey toward recovery). Little attention has been paid to the mythic figure of the trickster, recently identified by Arthur Frank (2009) as a prominent trope in some narrative accounts of illness. We investigated the prevalence of 3 tricksterly themes expressed within young adults' stories of cancer: destabilizing social or cosmic order (uncertainty), challenging dominant expectations for human life (subversion), and exploring alternative ways of viewing the world (possibility).
  
  
  METHODS
  We recruited 21 young adults with cancer from across Canada and conducted semistructured interviews. We then analyzed their stories using some elements of thematic, structural, and dialogical/performative narrative analysis-drawing attention to what was told and how/to whom were they told (Crossley, 2000; Frank, 2012; Riessman, 2008).
  
  
  RESULTS
  We describe each of the 3 themes in turn (i.e., uncertainty, subversion, and possibility) using excerpts from 6 interview transcripts, and show how they meaningfully converge into an interpretive framework of tricksterdom.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We conclude that the 3 themes of uncertainty, subversion, and possibility seem to come together as tricksterly performances, disrupting audiences' expectations of more typical forms of cancer narratives and calling attention to less familiar, structured, and "tellable" ways of narrating illness.
authors.affiliation: School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa.
authors.forename: Chad
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hammond
authors.affiliation: Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reese
authors.affiliation: Culture and Human Development Program, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan.
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Teucher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D035501:Uncertainty; D055815:Young Adult