Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, & Discovery

Rachel Adamss life had always gone according to plan. She had an adoring husband, a beautiful two-year-old son, a sunny Manhattan apartment, and a position as a tenured professor at Columbia University. Everything changed with the birth of her second child, Henry. Just minutes after he was born, doctors told her that Henry had Down syndrome, and she knew that her life would never be the same.

 

In this honest, self-critical, and surprisingly funny book, Adams chronicles the first three years of Henrys life and her own transformative experience of unexpectedly becoming the mother of a disabled child. A highly personal story of one familys encounter with disability, Raising Henry is also an insightful exploration of todays knotty terrain of social prejudice, disability policy, genetics, prenatal testing, medical training, and inclusive education. Adams untangles the contradictions of living in a society that is more enlightened and supportive of people with disabilities than ever before, yet is racing to perfect prenatal tests to prevent children like Henry from being born. Her book is gripping, beautifully written, and nearly impossible to put down. Once read, her familys story is impossible to forget.

A mothers deeply moving account of raising a son with Down syndrome in a world crowded with contradictory attitudes toward disabilities

Rachel Adams is professor of English and American studies at Columbia University, where she is also director of the Future of Disability Studies Project. She is the author of Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Adams lives with her husband and two sons in New York City.