Marcy Sheiner
Autor(a) de Herotica 4: A New Collection of Erotic Writing by Women
About the Author
Obras de Marcy Sheiner
Herotica 1 exemplar(es)
Associated Works
The Essential Hip Mama: Writing from the Cutting Edge of Parenting (Live Girls) (2004) — Contribuinte — 51 cópias
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 20th century
- Sexo
- female
- Local de nascimento
- Bronx, New York, USA
- Ocupação
- editor
author
Membros
Resenhas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 19
- Also by
- 9
- Membros
- 501
- Popularidade
- #49,399
- Avaliação
- 3.5
- Resenhas
- 1
- ISBNs
- 32
- Idiomas
- 1
Despite the concise prose and short length overall, much ground is covered. For this is a story not only about Sheiner and her son, Daryl, but about the profound changes over the last 50 years in the diagnosis, treatment, understanding, and outcomes of the cruel medical condition formally known as hydrocephalus and commonly known as “water on the brain.”
Having grown up in the 60s as did Sheiner, I can vouch for her pitch-perfect recall about the steel rollers in women's hair, the salmon-colored seats in waiting rooms, and the smells of Toll House cookies that wafted through this ostensibly “perfectly normal” time. Under the surface, however, the era was ready to erupt into someting quite different. Sheiner's path was just as turbulent as the era, and she shares her personal growth toward consciousness and radicalism unstintingly. The personal story and the larger picture are tied together with great finesse.
Even if personal opinion should be allowed great latitude in a memoir, there appear to be a few too many villains in the piece. Nearly every main character comes in for harsh criticism, whether for failing to notice Sheiner's plight or for failing to do anything about it. This creates an uncomfortable sense that parts of the memoir may represent “payback time” for these perceived failings of her inner circle. This is not to say that the author merely unloads her pain onto others, for she is equally unsparing toward herself.
For example, on pg. 117: “...I, a middle-class American girl, suffered from malnutrition substantial enough to cause a birth defect in my child...” Sheiner bases this startling self-accusation on recent studies which have shown that a lack of folic acid (found in green leafy vegetables) is a primary cause of diseases of the central nervous system in newborns. Having “...lived primarily on chocolate chip cookies and Coca cola...” throughout her adolescence, and having continued this regime during her pregnancy, Sheiner has “...no trouble believing that Daryl's hydrocephalus resulted from my poor nutritional habits.” For what it's worth, this reader, who was raised with 8 sisters, many of whom had woeful eating habits not too different from those described by Sheiner, finds it difficult to believe that the author's eating habits were the certain cause of her son's condition.
Engagingly written and emotionally honest, this book pulls no punches. On the contrary, her presentation will land solid blows to the ignorance and complacency of many an AB (able-bodied) reader, if they are willing to learn from her hard-won experience. We are better off for Marcy Sheiner having written this book.… (mais)