Download Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio, by Anne Finger
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Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio, by Anne Finger
Download Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio, by Anne Finger
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During the first half of the twentieth century, epidemics of polio caused fear and panic, killing some who contracted the disease, leaving others with varying degrees of paralysis. The defeat of polio became a symbol of modern technology's ability to reduce human suffering. But while the story of polio may have seemed to end on April 12, 1956, when the Salk vaccine was declared a success, millions of people worldwide are polio survivors.
In this dazzling memoir, Anne Finger interweaves her personal experience with polio with a social and cultural history of the disease. Anne contracted polio as a very young child, just a few months before the Salk vaccine became widely available. After six months of hospitalization, she returned to her family's home in upstate New York, using braces and crutches. In her memoir, she writes about the physical expansiveness of her childhood, about medical attempts to "fix" her body, about family violence, job discrimination, and a life rich with political activism, writing, and motherhood.
She also writes an autobiography of the disease, describing how it came to widespread public attention during a 1916 epidemic in New York in which immigrants, especially Italian immigrants, were scapegoated as being the vectors of the disease. She relates the key roles that Franklin Roosevelt played in constructing polio as a disease that could be overcome with hard work, as well as his ties to the nascent March of Dimes, the prototype of the modern charity. Along the way, we meet the formidable Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who claimed to have found a revolutionary treatment for polio and who was one of the most admired women in America at mid-century; a group of polio survivors who formed the League of the Physically Handicapped to agitate for an end to disability discrimination in Depression-era relief projects; and the founders of the early disability-rights movement, many of them polio survivors who, having been raised to overcome obstacles and triumph over their disabilities, confronted a world filled with barriers and impediments that no amount of hard work could overcome.
Anne Finger writes with the candor and the skill of a novelist, and shows not only how polio shaped her life, but how it shaped American cultural experience as well.
- Sales Rank: #2293788 in Books
- Published on: 2006-10-31
- Released on: 2006-10-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.58" h x 1.12" w x 6.39" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In skillful prose, Finger merges memoir with historical narrative about how polio was viewed and dealt with in the years before the Salk vaccine was invented 50 years ago. Evocative and often poetic, the memoir is also a litany of the miserable, useless, even harmful treatments imposed by helpless doctors on suffering children. She offers a nuanced history, for instance, of the painful and unorthodox heat treatments espoused by Elizabeth Kenny. Finger (Bone Truth), a creative writing teacher at Wayne State and the University of Texas at Austin, was a toddler when she contracted polio in 1954 and describes the traumatic operations, beginning when she was six, that led in turn to complications when she was in her 40s. Taught to believe that she could overcome her disability, Finger overexercised and, while living in England, attended antiwar demonstrations that were physically dangerous. Hospitalized with depression at 20, Finger believes her emotional state can be attributed to polio's effects on the brain in addition to having an abusive father who once choked her during a rage. After years of dissociating herself from others who had had polio, Finger writes, she slowly began her involvement in the disability rights movement and has dealt with a diagnosis of postpolio syndrome. (Nov.)
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Review
“Readers will find themselves caught up in a disabled woman’s coming to terms with herself, her dysfunctional family and society. This unsentimental, grippingly told story will captivate readers and sensitive them to the world of the disabled.”
—Library Journal
“Anne Finger creates a lyric prose that shimmers like a serious dream. Both public and private stories concern her narrator's quest for the truth about disabled lives. This is a memoir of history and imagination and it belongs on every book shelf.”
— Stephen Kuusisto, Professor of Disability Studies, The Ohio State University and author of Planet of the Blind
“An informative and rewarding narrative of living with a disability…”
—Kirkus
“…skillful prose…evocative and often poetic…a nuanced history.”
—Publishers Weekly
From the Inside Flap
During the first half of the twentieth century, epidemics of polio caused fear and panic, killing some who contracted the disease, leaving others with varying degrees of paralysis. The defeat of polio became a symbol of modern technology’s ability to reduce human suffering. But while the story of polio may have seemed to end on April 12, 1956, when the Salk vaccine was declared a success, millions of people worldwide are polio survivors.
In this dazzling memoir, Anne Finger interweaves her personal experience with polio with a social and cultural history of the disease. Anne contracted polio as a very young child, just a few months before the Salk vaccine became widely available. After six months of hospitalization, she returned to her family’s home in upstate New York, using braces and crutches. In her memoir, she writes about the physical expansiveness of her childhood, about medical attempts to “fix” her body, about family violence, job discrimination, and a life rich with political activism, writing, and motherhood.
She also writes an autobiography of the disease, describing how it came to widespread public attention during a 1916 epidemic in New York in which immigrants, especially Italian immigrants, were scapegoated as being the vectors of the disease. She relates the key roles that Franklin Roosevelt played in constructing polio as a disease that could be overcome with hard work, as well as his ties to the nascent March of Dimes, the prototype of the modern charity. Along the way, we meet the formidable Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who claimed to have found a revolutionary treatment for polio and who was one of the most admired women in America at mid-century; a group of polio survivors who formed the League of the Physically Handicapped to agitate for an end to disability discrimination in Depression-era relief projects; and the founders of the early disability-rights movement, many of them polio survivors who, having been raised to overcome obstacles and triumph over their disabilities, confronted a world filled with barriers and impediments that no amount of hard work could overcome.
Anne Finger writes with the candor and the skill of a novelist, and shows not only how polio shaped her life, but how it shaped American cultural experience as well. Anne Finger has taught creative writing at Wayne State University in Detroit and at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of a collection of short stories, an autobiographical essay, and a novel. She was the president of the Society for Disability Studies and continues to be active in the disability rights movement. She lives in Oakland, California.
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Top notch, both as memoir and polio primer
By Timothy J. Bazzett
This is a fascinating read, both as a primer on the nearly forgotten scourge that polio was up until fifty years ago, and also as a look into a tumultuous and difficult life. Anne Finger wasn't just coping with being a polio victim from early childhood, she also had to deal with a violently abusive parent in her father, who may well have been an undiagnosed bipolar/schizophrenic. Finger describes in frightening detail her long-suppressed memories of being choked and beaten by her father, behavior which was ignored or rationalized by her "enabler" mother. She also notes that her own clinical depression and suicidal tendencies as a young adult may have been inevitable, given her upbringing. In spite of all this, she continued to struggle for understanding of her parents' behavior, linking it often to her "imperfection" of being a polio from early childhood. There is much critically important information on polio - its history and near-eradication - here too, making it an important document in the literature of the disease. Finger has obviously done her homework, making numerous references to other talented polio memoirists and historians such as Leonard Kriegel, Charles Mee, Tony Gould, Peg Kehret, Daniel Wilson, John Paul and Wilfred Sheed, as well as other lesser known writers. This is an important and eminently readable book. - Tim Bazzett, author of Love, War & Polio
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Probably only deserves one star
By Jeani Rector
I would like to say up front that the only reason I am giving ELEGY FOR A DISEASE two stars instead of one is because of the fascinating part about the anti-war movement in the late 1960s.
Otherwise, this book would only earn one star at best and I will explain why.
I can understand Ms. Finger's desire not to be pitied, or even admired. However, she expresses such anger in this book that it takes away from any understanding of her situation. To expect others to be tolerant of you, you must be tolerant of others.
As a non-disabled person, I got this book in order to UNDERSTAND. I wanted to educate myself on Ms. Finger's life as a polio survivor. I thought this book would be a good source of education so that I would gleam valuable information from Ms. Finger's point of view.
Instead, I was bombarded with anger and even disgust at the non-disabled. For example, in one scene, Ms. Finger was trying to reach the button at a cross-walk and noticed a female driver staring at her. Ms. Finger yells at the driver, who responds, "I was only admiring you." To that, Ms. Finger became even more verbally abusive.
So, my message to you, Ms. Finger, is this: "If you don't like the behavior of the non-disabled, EDUCATE us, don't YELL at us, don't scorn us, and don't carry this tremendous anger towards us. Do you want us to understand? HELP us to understand."
Your book did not accomplish that. I finally threw the book on the floor in disgust after not even finishing the last chapter. The non-disabled are not voyeurs and vicarious. We are not cruel and evil. We just misunderstand.
Ms. Finger, your book is a missed opportunity to set the record straight. In the meantime, I find your book angry, whining, and that chip on your shoulder is HUGE.
For everyone else: Don't buy this book if you are not disabled, or else you will be classified as "the enemy."
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Trancendent
By a reader
This book is so much more than it seems from its description. I wish I could convince people who don't particularly have an interest in polio or in feminism or in personal narrative to read this book. When I was reading it, I wanted to tell everyone I met about it. It is amazing on so many levels, yet it will probably never get the attention of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Oh well... I was lucky enough to read it cover-to-cover, and I am a richer person for it.
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