Overview

""I read My Body Politic with admiration, sometimes for the pain that all but wept on the page, again for sheer exuberant friendships, for self-discovery, political imagination, and pluck. . . . Wonderful! In a dark time, a gift of hope. -Daniel Berrigan, S.J. ""The struggles, joys, and political awakening of a firecracker of a narrator. . . . Linton has succeeded in creating a life both rich and enviable. With her crackle, irreverence, and intelligence, it's clear that the author would never be willing to settle. . . . Wholly enjoyable."" -Kirkus Reviews ""Linton is a passionate guide to a world many outsiders, and even insiders, find difficult to navigate. . . . In this volume, she recounts her personal odyssey, from flower child . . . to disability-rights/human rights activist."" -Publishers Weekly ""Witty, original, and political without being politically correct, introducing us to a cast of funny, brave, remarkable characters (including the professional dancer with one leg) who have changed the way that 'walkies' understand disability. By the time Linton tells you about the first time she was dancing in her wheelchair, you will feel like dancing, too."" ---Carol Tavris, author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion ""This astonishing book has perfect pitch. It is filled with wit and passion. Linton shows us how she learned to 'absorb disability,' and to pilot a new and interesting body. With verve and wonder, she discovers her body's pleasures, hungers, surprises, hurts, strengths, limits, and uses."" -Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature ""An extraordinarily readable account of life in the fast lane... a brilliant autobiography and a great read."" -Sander L. Gilman, author of Fat Boys: A Slim Book While hitchhiking from Boston to Washington, D.C., in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam, Simi Linton was involved in a car accident that paralyzed her legs and took the lives of her young husband and her best friend. Her memoir begins with her struggle to regain physical and emotional strength and to resume her life in the world. Then Linton takes us on the road she traveled (with stops in Berkeley, Paris, Havana) and back to her home in Manhattan, as she learns what it means to be a disabled person in America. Linton eventually completed a Ph.D., remarried, and began teaching at Hunter College. Along the way she became deeply committed to the disability rights movement and to the people she joined forces with. The stories in My Body Politic are populated with richly drawn portraits of Linton's disabled comrades, people of conviction and lusty exuberance who dance, play-and organize--with passion and commitment. My Body Politic begins in the midst of the turmoil over Vietnam and concludes with a meditation on the U.S. involvement in the current war in Iraq and the war's wounded veterans. While a memoir of the author's gradual political awakening, My Body Politic is filled with adventure, celebration, and rock and roll-Salvador Dali, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix all make cameo appearances. Linton weaves a tale that shows disability to be an ordinary part of the twists and turns of life and, simultaneously, a unique vantage point on the world.

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9780472115396

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Reviews

A kind of road book with a 1960s counterculture sensibility throughout.... My Body Politic combines the private with the political, at once a history of Linton's body and a reflection on the state of disability in the United States. - Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan

A kind of road book with a 1960s counterculture sensibility throughout.... My Body Politic combines the private with the political, at once a history of Linton's body and a reflection on the state of disability in the United States. - Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan

The struggles, joys and political awakening of a firecracker of a narrator who has spent her adult life in a wheelchair. In 1971, Linton was your run-of-the-mill countercultural college dropout. But everything changed while she was hitchhiking to a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Sideswiped on the interstate, the author was instantly paralyzed, and her husband and best friend killed. Since that day, Linton has devoted herself to becoming many things-psychologist, professor, activist-while steadily refusing to be defined by her disability. It took much of the past 30-plus years for Linton to evolve from passive patient to professional woman determined to blend in, to activist in the disability rights movement. In a work that blends memoir and cultural critique, Linton discusses the history of disabled people and their marginalization. Long before she was aware of any kind of cultural context for her disability, Linton was determined to live her life fully: return to college, achieve a degree in psychology, live alone, drive a car. And she was seized with a need to make sense of her changed body, in particular to understand how her sex life would be affected. With romance in Manhattan, a sojourn in Berkeley, classes at Columbia and wheelchair dance lessons (taught by a quadriplegic friend), Linton has succeeded in creating a life both rich and enviable. With her crackle, irreverence and intelligence, it's clear that the author would never be willing to settle. Wholly enjoyable. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Simi Linton is a prominent activist and author of numerous articles about disability. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University and until 1998 taught at Hunter College. She is author of Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity and founder of Disability/Arts, an organization that works with artists and cultural institutions to help shape the presentation of disability in the arts and to increase the representation of works by disabled artists. Linton lives in New York City. Visit the author's website at: www.similinton.com. Find out more about Invitation to Dance, the documentary about Simi Linton inspired by her memoir, now available through Kino Lorber EDU.

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