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A review by vandreskog
Jeg lever et liv som ligner deres by Jan Grue
5.0
I read this book in one day. I had a day to myself in a foreign city, and walked from cafe to park bench to random flight of stairs. I sat down, read for an hour, felt a bit chilly or hungry, walked the shortest distance I could get away with, before sitting down and reading some more.
Jan Grue has written a beautifully poignant and literally accomplished memoir about growing up with a disability. At the same time, he draws on his unique academic insights as an accomplished disability studies scholar to make his tale both deeply personal and highly thought provoking and politically relevant. There are so many different strengths to this book. The sections where he's reading his own medical journals from his childhood through the dual lens of his grown-up self and the detached scholar spurred me to think about the objectification of the patient in modern medicine in ways that I never did before. His reflections around the coexistence of his marginalisation as a person with a disability and his privilege as a child of resourceful and committed parents in the highly educated Norwegian (upper) middle class add depth and perspective and challenges some common tropes about the high achieving disabled person.
You can read this book as a memoir. You can read it as an insight into growing up with a disability. You can read it as a thoughtful and mild-mannered call to political action. Whatever, as long as you read it!
Jan Grue has written a beautifully poignant and literally accomplished memoir about growing up with a disability. At the same time, he draws on his unique academic insights as an accomplished disability studies scholar to make his tale both deeply personal and highly thought provoking and politically relevant. There are so many different strengths to this book. The sections where he's reading his own medical journals from his childhood through the dual lens of his grown-up self and the detached scholar spurred me to think about the objectification of the patient in modern medicine in ways that I never did before. His reflections around the coexistence of his marginalisation as a person with a disability and his privilege as a child of resourceful and committed parents in the highly educated Norwegian (upper) middle class add depth and perspective and challenges some common tropes about the high achieving disabled person.
You can read this book as a memoir. You can read it as an insight into growing up with a disability. You can read it as a thoughtful and mild-mannered call to political action. Whatever, as long as you read it!