How I Became a Human Being

by O'Brien, Mark; Kendall, Gillian (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780299184346
• ISBN10: 029918434X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-30
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

In September 1955 six-year-old Mark O'Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a coma to find himself enclosed from the neck down in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life. For the first time in paperback, How I Became a Human Beingis O'Brien's account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien 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 physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

Author Biography

Mark O'Brien was a published poet, cofounder of the Lemonade Factory, and the subject of the 1997 Academy Award-winning documentary Breathing Lessons. He died in 1999 at the age of forty-nine just after completing a draft of How I Became a Human Being. Gillian Kendall is author of Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas and editor of Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Prologue	p. 3
Dependent
Dorchester (1949-1955)	p. 7
Polio (1955-1957)	p. 19
Stoughton (1957-1966)	p. 31
The Move (January-April 1966)	p. 47
Sacramento (1966-1976)	p. 53
Kaiser (September 1976)	p. 66
Fairmont (September 1976-September 1978)	p. 83
Independent
Year One (September 1978-June 1979)	p. 109
English Major (June 1979-December 1980)	p. 142
Fiat Lux (January 1981-June 1982)	p. 159
Graduate School (July 1982-June 1983)	p. 179
A Berkeley Life (June 1983-July 1991)	p. 187
The Sex Surrogate (1985)	p. 213
Poet and Journalist (circa 1983-1995)	p. 222
The Blue Terror (July-August 1991)	p. 236
Afterword (August 1991-May 1997)	p. 249
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