Poster Child: A Memoir
by Emily Rapp
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Description
Emily Rapp was born with a birth defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she'd had dozens of operations and had lost her entire leg from just above the knee. She had also become the smiling, always perky, indefatigable poster child for the March of Dimes, and spent much of her childhood traveling around Wyoming making appearances and giving pep talks. All the while she was learning to live with what she later called "my grievous, show more irrevocable flaw." This is Rapp's brutally honest and often darkly humorous account of wrestling with the tyranny of self-image as a teenager and then ultimately coming to terms with her own body as a young woman. It's about what it's like to live inside a broken body in a society that values beauty above almost everything else.--From publisher description. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Although I had a stack of books to choose from, I read this one first because I was so taken with the photo on the cover.
Emily is a little girl on a pretty bike with training wheels. Her red hair is long. She looks like a fun but girly girl wearing white lacy socks and white sandals. But there is one thing amiss in the photo–the girl has an artificial leg.
I read Emily’s book not long after reading Lucy Grealy’s memoir. Both are about childhoods filled with surgeries and medical problems. In this case, Emily’s foot was amputated by doctors as a treatment for proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD).
This memoir pulled me in because the voice is that of a friend, and she tells her story with honesty, humility, and intelligence.
This show more book is so graceful and appears as if it has written itself. But I now know better. A lot of hard work went into making it all look simple. Rapp didn’t spend that much time writing it either. And her degree was in theology, not writing. She graduated from Divinity School at age 23. So impressive. show less
Emily is a little girl on a pretty bike with training wheels. Her red hair is long. She looks like a fun but girly girl wearing white lacy socks and white sandals. But there is one thing amiss in the photo–the girl has an artificial leg.
I read Emily’s book not long after reading Lucy Grealy’s memoir. Both are about childhoods filled with surgeries and medical problems. In this case, Emily’s foot was amputated by doctors as a treatment for proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD).
This memoir pulled me in because the voice is that of a friend, and she tells her story with honesty, humility, and intelligence.
This show more book is so graceful and appears as if it has written itself. But I now know better. A lot of hard work went into making it all look simple. Rapp didn’t spend that much time writing it either. And her degree was in theology, not writing. She graduated from Divinity School at age 23. So impressive. show less
Rapp writes a nice sentence, but holy hell this was boring. I feel certain that I have fulfilled my lifetime quota of reading about visits to the prosthetist's office. Though their lives are altogether different this reminded me of the Dave Grohl bio which I abandoned early on. Well put together, the memoirists both seem like nice people, but so filled with the mundane it is impossible to imagine anyone could possibly be interested.
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Author Information
4+ Works 340 Members
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Emily Rapp
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 362.197 — Social sciences Social problems and social services Social problems of and services to groups of people People with physical illnesses Services to people with specific conditions Surgery; Dentistry
- LCC
- QM117 .R37 — Science Human anatomy Human anatomy General
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 118
- Popularity
- 274,734
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.57)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 3
