Unbound: Notes from a Reluctant Disability Activist

di Ben Mattlin (Autore)

John F Blair Publisher, 2025

This insightful and often witty collection of essays charts the making of a reluctant disability activist—including his commentary for NPR, the New York Times and elsewhere. Ben Mattlin was born in 1962 with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital and progressive neuromuscular weakness. He never stood or walked but grew up expecting a normal life. In this book of essays, he chronicles that life and also charts his growth as a reluctant disability activist and public intellectual. Mattlin’s disability was from birth. Raised in a family that insisted that he be educated in a mainstream setting, he never thought about his disability as being an obstacle until adulthood. It was not until he had graduated from Harvard and could not find a job that he began to understand what disability rights activists were talking about. These collected short pieces chronicle Mattlin’s intellectual coming-of-age including his beginnings, difficult conversations about disability, the social aspects of being disabled in a nondisabled world, and a wider perspective as the author looks back on his sixty years of disability. The book contains a variety of essays intermixed with a few edited podcast transcripts. Some of the pieces are deeply personal; others are stridently political. All of them are guaranteed to make readers see life and the world in a new way. Altogether, this collection is a frank, unsentimental examination of some of the most important and moving issues of our day—always rendered with intelligence, sensitivity, and a liberal sprinkling of humor.

• Autore: Ben Mattlin
• Editore: John F Blair Publisher
• Anno: 2025
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 250 p.
• Dimensioni: 228 x 152 mm
• EAN: 9781958888520

Testo in English