How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man's Quest for Independence (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

O'Brien, Mark

ISBN 10: 029918434X / ISBN 13: 9780299184346

Published by University of Wisconsin Press, 2003

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00070801310

Synopsis:

In September 1955 six-year-old Mark O'Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a coma to find himself enclosed from the neck down in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life.

For the first time in paperback, How I Became a Human Being is O'Brien's account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralysed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

About the Author: Mark O'Brien was a published poet and cofounder of the Lemonade Factory. He died in 1999 at the age of forty-nine just after completing a draft of How I Became a Human Being.

Gillian Kendall is author of Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas and editor of Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Bibliographic Details

Title: How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man's...
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication Date: 2003
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good