An illuminating narrative on how the experience of mothering a special needs child requires intellectual work as well as...
For years, Adams (English and American Studies/Columbia Univ.; Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination, 2001) focused her attention on disability studies. Her self-described “obsession” with outsiders sensationalized due to their physical deformities turned personal when her second son, Henry, was born with Down syndrome.
The author’s clear, precise memoir offers an account of her feelings, which run the gamut from shocked dismay to unequivocal acceptance, and the process by which she and her husband arrived at a place of profound love and gratitude for Henry and his differences. Relying on a support network of friends and, for Henry, occupational, speech and feeding therapists, special educators and evaluators, Adams frequently doubted whether anything she was doing would make a difference during his first years. A literary critic, she charts her course personally and professionally, as a new mother to a disabled child and as a scholar of disability studies, examining how these two roles intersect and complement one another. She cites innumerable books and studies and explores views on prenatal genetic testing. In describing the “paradox of disability,” she writes, “If we live long enough, it will happen to all of us. And yet when it happens it always comes as a surprise.” While Adams admits that nothing could have fully prepared her to be a parent of a disabled child—including her expertise in the field—this work reflects her thoughtful balance of cerebral and nurturing instincts. “I like to think that someday Henry will read every word of this book,” she writes, “taking pleasure in seeing our entwined stories recorded in print.”
An illuminating narrative on how the experience of mothering a special needs child requires intellectual work as well as emotional growth.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-300-18000-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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