I read Bookish Beck’s review of this book back in October 2021 and while a lot of the medical memoirs she reads are too medical for me, this one, even though it quite obviously featured a lot of medical detail, appealed to me, I think because of the queer and art themes, so I went ahead and bought a copy in the October. Notably, the paperback had quite small print: I did manage it but it made it that tiny bit less accessible, which I felt was a pity. I’m glad I didn’t have to resort to the e-book copy I bought, as I wanted to see the reproductions of Lehrer’s art works and that’s still usually better in a book. Weirdly, I don’t seem to have recorded this book coming in to the TBR so I can’t comment on what I bought at the same time, but it was the oldest book on my print TBR when I took it from the shelf last month.

Riva Lehrer – “Golem Girl”

(07 October 2021)

There was no one left to tell me how to take care of myself. I clattered alone inside my body, not even sure what was left of me after all my operations. Mom had been my librarian, my architect, my surgeon general, my curator. She had left me half-formed; for all my teenage rebellion, I was unprepared to take over the task of inventing myself. (p. 172)

Riva was born in 1958 with the congenital condition of spina bifida. Countless operations and medical treatments – not all listed here – later, she’s still affected by her condition in terms of her appearance, her gait, her health, and her need to endure further medical interventions. But she’s not defined by this: she’s defined, if anything, by her uncompromising art and art practices. Boyfriends and girlfriends (and a wife before it was legally possible) have come and gone; her friendships and brothers have endured, and so has her art.

I was particularly impressed that in her “risk” series of collaborative works, she intentionally leaves her subject alone with her portrait of them, obliged to make some sort of intervention in the portrait. Crucially, many of these portraits as well as other series and self-portraits, are included in good copies in the book, with a section at the end explaining a lot of them and even including feedback from their subjects.

The first part of the book deals with Riva’s childhood under the fierce protection of a mother who ends up with her own back issues and surgery in a closely symbiotic relationship. It’s testament to Lehrer’s fierce independence that she manages to have any more adult experiences living in this almost suffocating environment. But she’s so independent that she manages not to interact with D/disabled culture at all until she joins an art group and has her eyes opened; she describes in similar honest detail her explorations of race and intersectionality which start in ignorance but blossom in learning.

Later in her life, she helps others learn, too, being an artist in residence in a medical school making sure the first person with a disability the students meet teaches them compassion and empathy and how people are different, not wrong, and having them sketch specimens as real people and present biographies of living people with the same condition: powerful work.

An epilogue brings the book into the pandemic period, just when she was about to stop writing, and hammers home the different experiences of the general population and the vulnerable. Searing honesty that links her life story telling and art seamlessly makes this indeed a book that was a worth winner of the Barbellion Prize, which is awarded “to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability”.

This was Book 1 for Pride Month (not an organised challenge, just thought I’d note them and have rearranged my 20 Books of Summer pile, too).