Poster Child

Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she'd had dozens of operations, had lost most of her leg, from just above the knee, and had become the smiling, indefatigable ""poster child"" for the March of Dimes. For years she made appearances at church suppers and rodeos, giving pep talks about how normal and happy she was. All the while she was learning to live with what she later described as ""my grievous, irrevocable flaw,"" and the paradox that being extraordinary was the only way to be ordinary.


Praise for Poster Child:



""Rapp's precise and forthright descriptions of her exhausting physical ordeals and complex psychic wounds are simultaneously harrowing and fascinating, and they foster a strong bond between writer and reader...Rapp approaches the memoir as a supple, revelatory, involving and generous genre....She offers a fresh perspective on our obsession with physical perfection, especially the crushing expectations for women, and she writes delicately about the fears that disability engenders regarding intimacy and sex. Rapp's insider's view of the history of prostheses deepens our empathy and admiration for those who depend on artificial limbs, a growing population, once again, in yet another time of war and horrific injuries. Memoir, the conduit from the personal to the universal, is the surest way into the kind of significant psychological, sociological and spiritual truth Rapp is engaged in articulating. And there isn't one false note here. Not one inauthentic moment. No cheap manipulation. No self-importance...Her cauterizing specificity is compelling, her candor incandescent and her intelligence, courage and spiritual diligence stupendous.""-Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times
""You can't put down this excellent memoir ...Poster Child beautifully illustrates every human being's sometimes overt, sometimes co

Author: Emily Rapp
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 01/02/2008
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781596915053

About the Author

A former Fulbright scholarship recipient, Emily Rapp has received numerous awards and recognition for her work, including from the Atlantic Monthly, StoryQuarterly, and the Corporation of Yaddo. In 2006 she was the Philip Roth Writerin- Residence at Bucknell University. She is currently a professor in the M.F.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

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