This book addresses the author’s belief in the wilfulness suicide entails. She argues suicide is a meaningful gesture holding more than private significance, it is a public statement of autonomy. The first 3 essays survey cultural, intellectual, & historical attitudes that have deprived the act of suicide of its significance. Other essays explore the political justification for treating people who wish to die as children, the suicides of disenfranchised people, & the mentality of the so-called victims.