From the
University of Wisconsin Press, which re-released the O'Brien autobiography,
How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man's Quest for Independence:
“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
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.
Available 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.
Mark O’Brien was a published poet
and co-founder of the Lemonade Factory, a California press that
published poetry by people with disabilities. O’Brien died in
1999 at the age of 49 after completing a draft of How
I Became a Human Being.
Gillian Kendall is author of Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas and editor of Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
