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What I've been reading: Books No. 33-34
Jun. 19th, 2018 12:32 pmBook No. 33 was "On the Move: A Life" by Oliver Sacks. The casual reader probably knows Sacks best as the author of medical/neurological case studies as in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and "Awakenings," the book on which the movie of the same name was based. What they might not know is that Sacks is gay but was quiet about it until near the end of his life, and I believe this memoir was kind of Sacks' coming out, in his mid-to-late 70s! The book does move sort of chronologically, but he hops back and forth in time and really organizes it by topic. It's called "On the Move" in part because of his love of motorcycles and also after a poem by his friend Thom Gunn. Sacks talks a bit about his childhood, a lot about his medical training and experiments with drugs, about body building, the books he wrote but that never got published because the manuscripts were lost, and the people and incidents that inspired his many books over the years. It's really hard to summarize what the book is about because Sacks' interests range so far and wide, but I really did enjoy this quite a lot. Sacks died a few years ago, and I think his work as writer who could translate medical ideas into narratives that the average person could grasp will be remembered. I'd like to go back and read more of his books (I believe I've read "Hat" and "Awakenings" but both more than 10 years ago).
Book No. 34 was "What Happened to You? Writing by Disabled Women", edited by Lois Keith. I didn't realize when I picked this up that all the writers are from Great Britain, but since a lot of my reading on disability is US-centric, this was an interesting read. A lot of issues are, of course, the same, but many are not. America has the ADA, and Britain has different laws and ordinances around equal access and other disability issue. They also have different social work and social net programs. Keith includes both people with obvious disabilities like being deaf, blind, or in a wheelchair but also includes people whose lives ride the border between "illness" and "disability" like women who are on disability because of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or juvenile arthritis. It includes a mix of fiction short stories, poetry, and essays. As with any compilation, some are better than others. I was struck by just how good a lot of the poetry was, which isn't necessarily my favorite in anthologies like this. I particularly liked everything by the editor, Lois Keith, as well as poems by an Irish woman named Mary Duffy who was a "thalidomide baby". Her poems are OUTSTANDING and I would love to be her friend. Keith was also careful to include several disabled lesbians as well as non-white disabled women. She was also careful not to make people stick to any kind of party line on disability, so there are subtle nuances in how the women perceive their place in society and how much activism is a part of their lives. The book is broken up into four sections by theme, but they're very loosely grouped. You'd expect a lot of them to be about the shock of adjustment or the sense of loss, but a lot of them are about just the everyday life of getting around in a wheelchair or dealing with well-meaning friends who say hurtful things. As women, they have interesting things to say about sexuality and parenting as well. I really enjoyed this and recommend it highly.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
Book No. 34 was "What Happened to You? Writing by Disabled Women", edited by Lois Keith. I didn't realize when I picked this up that all the writers are from Great Britain, but since a lot of my reading on disability is US-centric, this was an interesting read. A lot of issues are, of course, the same, but many are not. America has the ADA, and Britain has different laws and ordinances around equal access and other disability issue. They also have different social work and social net programs. Keith includes both people with obvious disabilities like being deaf, blind, or in a wheelchair but also includes people whose lives ride the border between "illness" and "disability" like women who are on disability because of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or juvenile arthritis. It includes a mix of fiction short stories, poetry, and essays. As with any compilation, some are better than others. I was struck by just how good a lot of the poetry was, which isn't necessarily my favorite in anthologies like this. I particularly liked everything by the editor, Lois Keith, as well as poems by an Irish woman named Mary Duffy who was a "thalidomide baby". Her poems are OUTSTANDING and I would love to be her friend. Keith was also careful to include several disabled lesbians as well as non-white disabled women. She was also careful not to make people stick to any kind of party line on disability, so there are subtle nuances in how the women perceive their place in society and how much activism is a part of their lives. The book is broken up into four sections by theme, but they're very loosely grouped. You'd expect a lot of them to be about the shock of adjustment or the sense of loss, but a lot of them are about just the everyday life of getting around in a wheelchair or dealing with well-meaning friends who say hurtful things. As women, they have interesting things to say about sexuality and parenting as well. I really enjoyed this and recommend it highly.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
