A01=Mark O'Brien
Author_Mark O'Brien
Category=DNBA
Category=VFJD
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_health-lifestyle
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780299184308
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Apr 2003
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In September 1955, six-year-old Mark O'Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a 30-day coma to find himself in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life. This volume is O'Brien's account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. He 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 weak physical state, O'Brien earned a graduate degree, explored his sexuality, fell in love, published poetry and worked as a journalist.
Mark O’Brien was the subject of the 1997 Academy Award–winning documentary Breathing Lessons. He was a published poet and cofounder of the Lemonade Factory, a California press that published poetry by people with disabilities. O’Brien died in 1999 at the age of forty-nine after completing a draft of How I Became a Human Being. Gillian Kendall is a writer. She has contributed to both Outright Radio and Sun Magazine; one of her short stories appeared in The Student Body, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
