Golem Girl
Riva Lehrer
Lordy hear this book roar! Lehrer’s personal memoir on growing up differently abled in a world that’s not built for her is astonishing. Seriously impressive piece of writing and made me laugh out loud as much as it sent me off for a cup of tea to settle my upset. Pulling no punches in prose or manners Lehrer examines her passion and the way life has served her an interesting hand to play and the triumphant ways she chooses not to play the game, but devise her own game, own rules and ultimately win on her own terms. I was challenged by the book but utterly charmed by the unremitting honesty of the author.
The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies. The book examines the limitations forced upon her, and the lack of opportunities, a difficult relationship with her Mother whose insight and tenacity drives Lehrer through years of surgical interventions, therapies and an early life which is threaded through and lived with medical interventions. Her mothers death, when Lehrer is 17 moves the book into different territory. She now has to navigate her own way, joins a group of artists who are building Disability Culture. Emboldened, Lehrer paints their portraits-inventing an intimate process that transforms the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to change the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.
Lehrer’s honesty, her examination of her Queerness and the liberation and struggles of coming out is woven through with a warm American Jewish attitude to life, it’s one which allows her to shine out and see the light of love in herself and those around her and then share that, generously and unconditionally, both with her paintings, and also here in this book which talks to us about the refulgent essence of each of us, no matter we may be gifted feet of clay. Wonderful!
Illustrated with the author’s magnificent portraits this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.
Out now- hardback £20
For more info or to order see the publishers website here:
You can listen in to an interview in the ‘Our Shelves’ series of podcast from Virago books with Lehrer here, talking about the book, art and life.
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