A compassionate and highly readable overview of therapeutic approaches to stuttering.
A comprehensive plan for dealing with a stutter.
“Everyone who stutters,” writes debut author and consultant Flaum early on in this book, “has similar stories of those awful experiences that made us realize we were ‘different’ and easily teased and mocked.” The broader personal and psychological circumstances surrounding stammering, the author contends, can often be just as important as the difficulty itself. As Dr. Heather Grossman, one expert, comments in the book, “the core problem of stuttering is actually made up of all the things that person does in order not to stutter.” These “avoidance tactics” include passing up social gatherings, relying only on texting rather than talking on the phone, and replacing a difficult-to-say word with an easier one even when the difficult word is the one you really want. However, people who’ve dealt with stuttering can attest that such tactics don’t always work. Flaum examines an array of alternatives, including a counterintuitive approach of intentionally stuttering a bit, which can help one relax; some people, he says, “feel stuttering on purpose for their first few words helps them feel more in control of their speech. It also helps reduce their fear of stuttering involuntarily, so they see no reason to hide it.” Another method, he writes, is so-called “easy stuttering,” in which one tries to “catch” the moment when a stutter occurs and draw it out it slightly—again, in order to relax and feel a sense of control. The author describes these and other approaches in detail over the course of this work.
Flaum, who has firsthand knowledge of stuttering, includes commentary from an array of other experts, including language pathologists and speech therapists, in order to provide his narrative with additional professional heft. He draws on his own considerable experience to smoothly contextualize the information for those readers who may be unfamiliar with the challenges of speech difficulties. He also makes a wise decision to include ample testimony from people who struggle with stuttering themselves, as his most likely audience is made up of these people and those who love and support them. These sections have the effect of personalizing the experience of speech difficulties and clarifying their larger psychological effects: “Keep in mind, this is not about recovery from stuttering,” one such testimonial asserts. “We are recovering from shame.” These personal insights from lived experience effectively bring the book to life, and their quality is matched by the range of Flaum's advice and the humanity of his own prose. He addresses some of the everyday obstacles that people dealing with stutters face, such as unfamiliar surroundings and the physical stress of anxiety, as he assesses various approaches to speech therapy; for each of these strategies, Flaum lays out the facts in a clear and upfront manner, assessing each type of therapy for strengths and weaknesses in a way that readers are sure to find valuable. Overall, Flaum delivers an encouraging guide that will make his target readership feel accepted and heard.
A compassionate and highly readable overview of therapeutic approaches to stuttering.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64293-653-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More thought-provoking work from an important creator.
The acclaimed graphic memoirist returns to themes of self-discovery, this time through the lens of her love of fitness and exercise.
Some readers may expect Bechdel to be satisfied with her career. She was the 2014 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and her bestselling memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? both earned universally rave reviews, with the former inspiring a Broadway musical that won five Tony awards. But there she was, in her mid-50s, suffering from “a distinct sense of dread” and asking herself, “where had my creative joy gone?” Ultimately, she found what she was seeking, or at least expanded her search. In what she calls “the fitness book,” the author recounts, from her birth to the present, the exercise fads that have swept the nation for decades, from the guru-worship of Charles Atlas and Jack LaLanne through running, biking, hiking, “feminist martial arts,” yoga, and mountain climbing. “I have hared off after almost every new fitness fad to come down the pike for the last six decades,” she writes. Yet this book is about more than just exercise. Bechdel’s work always encompasses multiple interlocking themes, and here she delves into body image; her emerging gay consciousness; the connection between nature and inner meaning; how the transcendentalists were a version of the hippies a century earlier; and how her own pilgrimage is reminiscent of both Margaret Fuller and Jack Kerouac, whose stories become inextricably entwined in these pages with Bechdel’s. The author’s probing intelligence and self-deprecating humor continue to shimmer through her emotionally expressive drawings, but there is so much going on (familial, professional, romantic, cultural, spiritual) that it is easy to see how she became overwhelmed—and how she had to learn to accept the looming mortality that awaits us all. In the end, she decided to “stop struggling,” a decision that will relieve readers as well.
More thought-provoking work from an important creator.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-544-38765-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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