Thursday, July 23, 2009

more advance praise!

"This is the most important book I've read in years. Whether you are subject or ally, My Baby Rides the Short Bus will open you--with its truth, humanity, and poetry. Lucky you to have found it. Now stick it in your heart."
--Ariel Gore

"Smart, diverse, inspiring. My Baby Rides the Short Bus reminds us of what we all have in common and how much more work there still is to be done."
--Vicki Forman, author of This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood

"The contributors of this important and necessary anthology span a range of decades from a time when "defective babies" were institutionalized, to the nascent civil rights movement, straight on to a new era of independent living. The families sharing these stories live and often struggle with the consequences of illness, injury, genetic inheritance, or sometimes a perplexing and mysterious combination of factors, insisting that the world recognize a basic fact: "We are not science experiments."

Disability is a uniquely humbling and equal experience, sometimes expected, often striking without warning. These parents are honest about both the distressing and illuminating facts of their lives; the stories are caustic, exhilarating, fierce, funny, harrowing. Yet despite the intricate and often overwhelming challenges they face, these parents and children never succumb to maudlin stereotypes, because, as one contributor learns, "it isn't saintly to take care of someone you love."
--Bee Lavender, author of Lessons in Taxidermy: A Compendium of Safety and Danger