[ADH]⋙ PDF Free My Left Foot Christy Brown 9780749304607 Books

My Left Foot Christy Brown 9780749304607 Books

Download As PDF : My Left Foot Christy Brown 9780749304607 Books

My Left Foot Christy Brown 9780749304607 Books

Christy Brown, one of 22 siblings, takes readers back to 1932 Dublin, Ireland, where his story began as a young child trapped by an unrecognized and unnamed disease, cerebral palsy. Being deemed mentally defective did not stop his mother’s devotion to her son who could not change, bathe, feed, or communicate himself. The same dedication displayed by his mother, gave him the motivation and knowledge to make his first attempt at communication. Her devotion also helped him become a skilled and successful artist, able to communicate his deepest feelings through various mediums with only the use of his left foot. Years later, he found the most successful means of therapy through composing his autobiography, addressed to anyone and everyone willing to take the time to see past the defective label to his true, inner intelligence and the struggles of being trapped inside a useless body.

Brown described his life chronologically with the first four chapters covering birth to nine years of age. Though these years were not without their own struggles, they are depicted as the happiest years of Brown’s life. It was a period when an unusable body did not phase Brown and the noticeable differences between him and his sibling were not obvious enough to divide him from his family. Many astounding triumphs were also achieved during this time, such as his first effort to communicate by drawing a shaky ‘A’ with a piece of chalk stuck between the toes of his left foot. So much promise, humor, and determination were displayed within this young boy until his freedom was lost with the breaking of his chariot along with his connection to the other children.

Chapters five through eight depict an almost entirely different child, riddled with self-hate at the thoughts of being a helpless boy who couldn’t walk, speak, feed or dress himself. Ten-year-old Brown, still without a diagnosis, found himself struggling to understand what made him different from his siblings and neighborhood friends. It was not until the introduction of painting and new acquaintances that he began to shed his depression and feel a sense of being useful and cherished by another human being. His success gave him pride for all that he had accomplished despite his situation and painting gave him a new avenue to express himself. His new talent and new friends helped him to once again forget his differences and he found hope until his heart was shattered from the look of pity and the looming realization that he would forever be separated emotionally and physically from others. Despair continued to follow Brown, at sixteen years old his siblings were moving away and taking their places in life while he was stuck behind prison walls, literally and figuratively. He found hate in the things he couldn’t do, for those opportunities had been robbed of him, and he hated the things he could do as all he yearned for was normalcy. A growing mind held hostage lost its ability to express feelings through paintings and after a close breaking point, Brown again found solace, this time through writing fiction stories of adventures he could never partake in. Rather than learn to understand his handicap, Brown became more troubled and bitter.

In Brown’s later teenage years, chapters nine through eleven, he began to place his hope in faith and medicine for a cure to heal his condition. In his travels, he witnessed disease and affliction far worse than his own ailments. However, the people he called family became more distant from him than ever before and his hope was all but lost when he was stuck inside the prison walls of his home. It was during these years that he finally learned about the disorder affecting his body and received word of a promising treatment, but only at the price of a valuable sacrifice. It was the desire to be cured and lead a normal life that drove Brown to give up the one ability that provided him with freedom.

In the final chapters of the book, Brown took another step in accepting himself for who he was, the afflictions he had faced, and the lonely life he felt he was destined to lead. This was when the urge to communicate with anyone and everyone originated. The clinic staff dedicated their lives to understanding and helping the individuals attending the clinic, they saw the value in the lives of the patients, but Brown wanted others to understand his life and people who had a life similar to his, and so his autobiography was born.

The autobiography of Christy Brown gives a captivating look into the life of a person born with an unforgiving disorder. I think there are many brilliant insights portrayed throughout the narrative. I was, however, slightly disappointed at the simplicity of the writing and feel it skimmed the surface of many things he truly felt. There seemed to be a lot of emotion that wasn’t transcribed within the writing. I know Brown was instructed to keep his writing short, simple, and to the point, but I feel like parts of his brilliant mind were lost by doing so.

I believe that individuals entering medical and social professions can benefit from reading this autobiography. It seems that professionals in any field can often get so locked in on a diagnosis or treatment that they forget there is an individual with a mind and feelings behind the diagnosis. Christy Brown’s story does a great job of breaking the idea that an individual affected by a crippling disorder does not have ideas, feelings, or preferences of their own. It also goes to show that a person who is lacking obvious communication skills can easily be more intelligent than ourselves, just because it’s not exposed in the same methods doesn’t mean it should be disregarded or labeled unimportant.


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My Left Foot Christy Brown 9780749304607 Books Reviews

Slightly used condition, arrived on time. This book is a good read and somewhat inspiring. The film did not quite follow the book, but did not distract from the story
Such a great true story. I saw the movie and enjoyed the book.
Good book
I liked the movie better... the book was very repetitious.
It was the movie that inspired me to want to read this book. The film starred Daniel Day Lewis, all convincingly twisted and crippled, his normally handsome face distorted and wracked with spasms. The book is a quick, light read, maybe not as dramatic as seeing how this terrible malady, cerebral palsy. manifests itself as when you watch it on film, but the miracle is not so much that it is well written, but that it was written at all, and how. Christy Brown did it using his left foot, the only part of his body over which he had control and he does have a story to tell. One reads with a sense of wonder how his intellectual capacity managed to be recognized and then you wonder how many people like him spent their lives in institutions unable to tell the world that they understood every word spoken to and around them. The times in which he lived are captured perfectly, as he describes being one of 22 children born, 13 of whom lived, the influence of the catholic church and the poverty and attitudes that prevailed during his childhood and how he was saved by the unquenshable trust manifested by his mother, that a man with an active, vital intelligence was hidden in that sad body.
A great book. Christy had a great way of showing and telling about his life.
This is the story of a young man who was born in Ireland in 1932, after a difficult birth and with a severe disability that the doctors of the time were unable to name. They urged his parents to disavow him, as he was, they believed, an imbecile with a severely spastic body. Moreover, his parents then had five other children, all healthy. Christy's mother, however, refused to institutionalize him, keeping him at home and treating him as she would her other children. It would not be until years later that she would learn that Christy's affliction was severe cerebral palsy.
Imprisoned in a world all his own and seeming without means to communicate, Christy, at the age of five, made an attempt that was to change his life forever. Rather than being imbecilic, Christy was actually highly intelligent. He took a piece of chalk with his left foot and, having captured the attention of his family, proceeded to scrawl on the floor a reasonable facsimile of the letter "A", astounding his loving family in the process.
By breaking the communications barrier, Christy demonstrated that he could learn and understand. From then on, his capacity for learning was prodigious. Who would have thought that within his severely contorted and convulsed body lay a razor sharp mind and a thirst for knowledge? Certainly not the medical community, which had been so willing to consign him to institutional living. Armed with his left foot, the only part of his body over which he seemed to have some control, Christy Brown would demonstrate to the world who he really was. He was, after all, not the imbecile that the medical community had originally thought but an intelligent and sentient human being.
This is Christy Brown's triumphant and inspirational story of his battle to learn to read, write, and paint, all with the aid of his left foot. It is an inspirational story of his quest for fulfillment. His yearning to be as others are is palpable, and his struggle for acceptance beyond the borders of his home and his physical limitations are well articulated. Christy Brown gives the reader a birds-eye view of what it is like to be a person with severe cerebral palsy. First published in Great Britain in 1954, when Christy Brown was twenty-two, this book, written with his left foot, is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
Christy Brown, one of 22 siblings, takes readers back to 1932 Dublin, Ireland, where his story began as a young child trapped by an unrecognized and unnamed disease, cerebral palsy. Being deemed mentally defective did not stop his mother’s devotion to her son who could not change, bathe, feed, or communicate himself. The same dedication displayed by his mother, gave him the motivation and knowledge to make his first attempt at communication. Her devotion also helped him become a skilled and successful artist, able to communicate his deepest feelings through various mediums with only the use of his left foot. Years later, he found the most successful means of therapy through composing his autobiography, addressed to anyone and everyone willing to take the time to see past the defective label to his true, inner intelligence and the struggles of being trapped inside a useless body.

Brown described his life chronologically with the first four chapters covering birth to nine years of age. Though these years were not without their own struggles, they are depicted as the happiest years of Brown’s life. It was a period when an unusable body did not phase Brown and the noticeable differences between him and his sibling were not obvious enough to divide him from his family. Many astounding triumphs were also achieved during this time, such as his first effort to communicate by drawing a shaky ‘A’ with a piece of chalk stuck between the toes of his left foot. So much promise, humor, and determination were displayed within this young boy until his freedom was lost with the breaking of his chariot along with his connection to the other children.

Chapters five through eight depict an almost entirely different child, riddled with self-hate at the thoughts of being a helpless boy who couldn’t walk, speak, feed or dress himself. Ten-year-old Brown, still without a diagnosis, found himself struggling to understand what made him different from his siblings and neighborhood friends. It was not until the introduction of painting and new acquaintances that he began to shed his depression and feel a sense of being useful and cherished by another human being. His success gave him pride for all that he had accomplished despite his situation and painting gave him a new avenue to express himself. His new talent and new friends helped him to once again forget his differences and he found hope until his heart was shattered from the look of pity and the looming realization that he would forever be separated emotionally and physically from others. Despair continued to follow Brown, at sixteen years old his siblings were moving away and taking their places in life while he was stuck behind prison walls, literally and figuratively. He found hate in the things he couldn’t do, for those opportunities had been robbed of him, and he hated the things he could do as all he yearned for was normalcy. A growing mind held hostage lost its ability to express feelings through paintings and after a close breaking point, Brown again found solace, this time through writing fiction stories of adventures he could never partake in. Rather than learn to understand his handicap, Brown became more troubled and bitter.

In Brown’s later teenage years, chapters nine through eleven, he began to place his hope in faith and medicine for a cure to heal his condition. In his travels, he witnessed disease and affliction far worse than his own ailments. However, the people he called family became more distant from him than ever before and his hope was all but lost when he was stuck inside the prison walls of his home. It was during these years that he finally learned about the disorder affecting his body and received word of a promising treatment, but only at the price of a valuable sacrifice. It was the desire to be cured and lead a normal life that drove Brown to give up the one ability that provided him with freedom.

In the final chapters of the book, Brown took another step in accepting himself for who he was, the afflictions he had faced, and the lonely life he felt he was destined to lead. This was when the urge to communicate with anyone and everyone originated. The clinic staff dedicated their lives to understanding and helping the individuals attending the clinic, they saw the value in the lives of the patients, but Brown wanted others to understand his life and people who had a life similar to his, and so his autobiography was born.

The autobiography of Christy Brown gives a captivating look into the life of a person born with an unforgiving disorder. I think there are many brilliant insights portrayed throughout the narrative. I was, however, slightly disappointed at the simplicity of the writing and feel it skimmed the surface of many things he truly felt. There seemed to be a lot of emotion that wasn’t transcribed within the writing. I know Brown was instructed to keep his writing short, simple, and to the point, but I feel like parts of his brilliant mind were lost by doing so.

I believe that individuals entering medical and social professions can benefit from reading this autobiography. It seems that professionals in any field can often get so locked in on a diagnosis or treatment that they forget there is an individual with a mind and feelings behind the diagnosis. Christy Brown’s story does a great job of breaking the idea that an individual affected by a crippling disorder does not have ideas, feelings, or preferences of their own. It also goes to show that a person who is lacking obvious communication skills can easily be more intelligent than ourselves, just because it’s not exposed in the same methods doesn’t mean it should be disregarded or labeled unimportant.