| Vendor | |
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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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GOLEM GIRL
A fascinating and yes, even fun, memoir. Even though the subject is heavy. The author wakes us up to see beauty differently - with a transformative effect.
In 1958, Riva is one of the first children born with spina bifida to live more than a few years. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her. They always send the message over and over again, with each new surgery, that she is broken. They instill in Riva the idea she will never have a "normal" life; a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent existence. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Her attachment to her mother keeps her alive, and eventually this dependency becomes oddly reciprocal.
Riva attends college, falls in love a few times and is living life as an artist as she has become to know it. 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--an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. With each portrait, and each person's story, the myths she's been told her whole life--about her body, her sexuality, and the value of normalcy--begin to crumble. She has always been an artist, and this new exploration helps to define why.
The experience of living as a disabled person in an able-bodied world has given Riva extraordinary insight into the ways women diminish themselves in order to be acceptable, and the ways we contort ourselves in order to be conventionally "beautiful." 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 survival and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to expand our own preconceptions of all people and to explore what it is to be human.
Riva Lehrer has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the University of Illinois. Her work has been featured in documentaries including The Paper Mirror (2012) by Charissa King-O'Brien, which traces her collaboration with graphic novelist Alison Bechdel; and Self Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer (2005) by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder.
Riva attends college, falls in love a few times and is living life as an artist as she has become to know it. 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--an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. With each portrait, and each person's story, the myths she's been told her whole life--about her body, her sexuality, and the value of normalcy--begin to crumble. She has always been an artist, and this new exploration helps to define why.
The experience of living as a disabled person in an able-bodied world has given Riva extraordinary insight into the ways women diminish themselves in order to be acceptable, and the ways we contort ourselves in order to be conventionally "beautiful." 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 survival and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to expand our own preconceptions of all people and to explore what it is to be human.
Riva Lehrer has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the University of Illinois. Her work has been featured in documentaries including The Paper Mirror (2012) by Charissa King-O'Brien, which traces her collaboration with graphic novelist Alison Bechdel; and Self Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer (2005) by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder.
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Published 2020-10-06 by One World |