Synopses & Reviews
September 1955. Six-year-old Mark O’Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a thirty-day coma to find himself enclosed from the neck down in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life.
How I Became a Human Being is Mark O’Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955, he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O’Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his weak physical state, O’Brien attended graduate school, explored his sexuality, fell in love, published poetry, and worked as a journalist. A determined writer, O’Brien used a mouthstick to type each word.
O’Brien’s story does not beg for sympathy. It is rather a day-to-day account of his reality—the life he crafted and maintained with a good mind, hired attendants, decent legislation for disabled people in California, and support from the University of California at Berkeley. He describes the ways in which a paralyzed person takes care of the body, mind, and heart. What mattered most was his writing, the people he loved, his belief in God, and his belief in himself.
Review
“O’Brien conveys his pain, his suffering, his depression, his anomie—without resorting to tugging at our heartstrings.”—Felice Picano, author of Like People in History
Review
“It’s a common accusation: People with disabilities live such sheltered, uneventful lives that they have no stories to tell. Mark O’Brien shoots that belief down with
How I Became a Human Being.”—
Echo MagazineReview
“King fashions a rich, compelling, and often wry narrative. . . . He captures ‘the labor of being sick in America.’”—Eric J. Iannelli, Times Literary Supplement
Review
“This moving autobiographical novel . . . brings into relief many of America’s follies and excesses, most notably our health-care system. . . . After more than fifteen years, America brings the narrator ‘not aspiration realized, nor a largeness of life fitting to its open spaces, but the nascent ability to be satisfied with less.’”—The New Yorker
Review
A painfully beautiful book. It’s also gloriously sexy and . . . among the finest depictions of queer life in 1990s San Francisco. Poetic, tragic, and often euphoric, it’s the kind of story that I found myself wanting to live inside of.”—
The Gay and Lesbian ReviewSynopsis
In September 1955 six-year-old Mark O’Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a coma to find himself enclosed from the neck down in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life.
For the first time in paperback, How I Became a Human Being is O’Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O’Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O’Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.
Synopsis
When an Englishman receives an invitation from an American university, he embraces it as a jubilant new beginning. Instead, on arrival, he is stricken with a persistent inability to stand up or think straight. Diagnosed with ME disease—also called chronic fatigue syndrome—he moves restlessly across his newly adopted country, searching for a love and a life suited to his new condition. Love and Fatigue in America briskly compresses an illness, a nation, and an era in a masterly blend of literary forms.
About the Author
Mark O’Brien was the subject of the 1997 Academy Award–winning documentary
Breathing Lessons. He was a published poet and cofounder of the Lemonade Factory, a California press that published poetry by people with disabilities. O’Brien died in 1999 at the age of forty-nine after completing a draft of
How I Became a Human Being. Gillian Kendall is a writer. She has contributed to both Outright Radio and Sun Magazine; one of her short stories appeared in
The Student Body, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Table of Contents
Preface
Prologue
Part 1: Dependent
1 Dorchester (1949–1955)
2 Polio (1955–1957)
3 Stoughton (1957–1966)
4 The Move (January–April 1966)
5 Sacramento (1966–1976)
6 Kaiser (September 1976)
7 Fairmont (September 1976–September 1978)
Part 2: Independent
8 Year One (September 1978–June 1979)
9 English Major (June 1979–December 1980)
10 Fiat Lux (January 1981–June 1982)
11 Graduate School (July 1982–June 1983)
12 A Berkeley Life (June 1983–July 1991)
13 The Sex Surrogate (1985)
14 Poet and Journalist (circa 1983–1995)
15 The Blue Terror (July–August 1991)
Afterword (August 1991–May 1997)