A gay child of straight parents, Andrew Solomon’s homosexuality was considered a diagnosed illness. As a journalist reporting on the growth of Deaf Pride in the 1990s, he began to consider illness and identity as a continuum with shifting boundaries. Spurred by the disability-rights movement and empowered by the Internet, he saw that communities with such “horizontal identities” were, and are, challenging the societal expectations and the norms surrounding identity.
Their stories begin in families coping with extreme difference: Dwarfism, Down Syndrome, Autism, multiple severe disabilities, or prodigious genius; children conceived in rape; children who identify as transgender; children who develop schizophrenia or commit serious crimes. The adage asserts that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in Solomon’s explorations, some apples fall on the other side of the world.
For ten years, after interviewing more than 250 families, Solomon has observed not just how some families learn to deal with exceptional children, but also how they find profound meaning in doing so. In Far From the Tree, Solomon mines the eloquence of those who have somehow summoned hope and courage in the face of heartbreaking prejudice and almost unimaginable physical, mental, and emotional difficulty.
When: Mon., Nov. 12, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Where: New York Public Library—Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Ave.
917-275-6975
Price: $25
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A gay child of straight parents, Andrew Solomon’s homosexuality was considered a diagnosed illness. As a journalist reporting on the growth of Deaf Pride in the 1990s, he began to consider illness and identity as a continuum with shifting boundaries. Spurred by the disability-rights movement and empowered by the Internet, he saw that communities with such “horizontal identities” were, and are, challenging the societal expectations and the norms surrounding identity.
Their stories begin in families coping with extreme difference: Dwarfism, Down Syndrome, Autism, multiple severe disabilities, or prodigious genius; children conceived in rape; children who identify as transgender; children who develop schizophrenia or commit serious crimes. The adage asserts that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in Solomon’s explorations, some apples fall on the other side of the world.
For ten years, after interviewing more than 250 families, Solomon has observed not just how some families learn to deal with exceptional children, but also how they find profound meaning in doing so. In Far From the Tree, Solomon mines the eloquence of those who have somehow summoned hope and courage in the face of heartbreaking prejudice and almost unimaginable physical, mental, and emotional difficulty.
Buy tickets/get more info now
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