Life Prints: A Memoir of Healing and Discovery

When she is six, Mary Grimley is the nation’s first ‘poster child’, dining with President Roosevelt at the Warm Springs rehabilitation centre and posing in her wheelchair for publicity shots. But a close look at photographs reveals something other than the cheerful invalid expected by the ‘abled’: mouth closed in a frown, eyes defiant and proud, this bold child is less than impressed with the role of ‘poor crippled girl’. In this courageous memoir, Mary Grimley Mason chronicles her long journey from this childhood, and her movement beyond the limitations society has prescribed not only for the physically challenged but for women of all abilities. Specialising academically in women’s autobiography, Mason is unusually well suited to narrate and interpret her own life, taking control of its representation with forthright resolve. In her frank life story, Mason recounts her struggles to stand as an independent person, and engaged scholar and an active woman.