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Title details for Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer - Available

Golem Girl

A Memoir

by Riva Lehrer
Riva Lehrer
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies
“Golem Girl is luminous; a profound portrait of the artist as a young—and mature—woman; an unflinching social history of disability over the last six decades; and a hymn to life, love, family, and spirit.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible creatures?
In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.
Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark—it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits—inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.
Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.
This audio production includes a PDF of illustrations and photographs from the book, which are also uniquely described aurally in the audiobook.
Priase for Golem Girl
“Lehrer’s story is a revelation of an inner subjective life—full of tragedy, love, and creativity—pushing against the external social stigmas, cultural narratives, and prejudices surrounding disability. She admits a felt kinship with other “monsters” because their bodies were also “built by human hands,” but unlike them, she is her own purpose, her own meaning, her own unstoppable golem.”—Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    October 6, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593207765
      • File size: 403611 KB
      • Duration: 14:00:51

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Artist, writer, and person living from birth into her seventh decade in what she terms a "socially challenged body," Riva Lehrer proves to be an engaging memoirist and a clear-voiced narrator with an excellent sense of pacing. Spina bifida has characterized her body without serving as the sole focus of either her own or her family's life. She moves us from her difficult birth through a childhood and adolescence of discovering both her physical and intellectual capacities, drawing listeners into reconsidering cultural assumptions and the need for each of us to locate social identity. More than an hour at the end of the memoir is given to an equally satisfying program in which narrator Cassandra Campbell delivers text written by Briana Beck that gives listeners what she calls "verbal interpretations of the visual images included in the printed book." F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 10, 2020
      Painter Lehrer applies the same unflinching gaze for which her portraits are known to a lifetime with spina bifida in this trenchant debut memoir of disability and queer culture. Born in 1958, Lehrer was among the first to benefit from a surgical breakthrough that enabled doctors to save the lives of newborns with her condition. In the book’s first half, Lehrer recounts finding uninhibited joy with other disabled children at Cincinnati’s Condon School, as well as some unnecessary and ultimately harmful medical procedures she endured. At 21 and living in Chicago, she discovered an exuberant sexuality—one she believed wasn’t possible for her—and grappled with feeling marginalized due to her queerness. The book’s second half, however, loses some of the intimacy as Lehrer adopts a more didactic tone to describe a succession of relationships and document the rise of her career as an artist and the way her work explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and disability (she includes photos and her own illustrations throughout). Lehrer notes that “international debates (such as those in Belgium and the Netherlands) persist over whether to treat infants like me at all,” and observes that “disability is the great billboard of human truth.... Add it to any discourse, and we can see what humanity truly values.” Readers will be sucked into Lehrer’s powerful memoir.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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