Rating: 
Summary: Coming to Terms with Disability
Review: This book contains the memoirs of John Hockenberry, a well-known journalist who is disabled. Hockenberry takes us through a blow-by-blow account of the accident which left him paralyzed from the chest down. He explains the nature and extent of his injuries and describes his experiences in the rehab hospital where he learned how to manage the needs of daily life from his wheelchair. He then takes us through the details of his young adult years, his education, marriage, and career. The only aspect of the book that I did not like was that Hockenberry occasionally gets a little heavy-handed with philosophizing. The extensive self-analysis, however is understandable, since this is very much a book about coming to terms with his life-to-date and his culture.
It was the 1980 eruptions at Mt. St. Helens that got Hockenberry his big break with NPR. Hockenberry was covering the reports for a local radio station in Eugene, Oregon, where he was living at the time, and his reports drew the attention of the national NPR news editors. They never suspected that their intrepid Oregonian journalist was in a wheelchair until the day he was not able to phone in a report before the deadline because he couldn't locate an accessible phone. NPR found that Hockenberry was quite talented at finding, writing, and reading news stories, and brought him to their headquarters in D.C. Later, Hockenberry was chosen to be the Middle East correspondent for NPR, stationed in Jerusalem. It was there, far from home and the Americans with Disabilities Act legislation, where Hockenberry faced tremendous challenges that taught him much about the human family.
Although I had listened to countless news reports from Hockenberry on NPR, I never knew about his disability until I heard him giving an interview on NPR about this book. The thought of someone who is paralyzed from the chest down voluntarily navigating through a war zone, managing to transport himself through terrain where wheels can't go, is simply mind-boggling. Hockenberry doesn't tell these stories to boast about his strengths- -instead, his goal is to explain how he is an ordinary person with his own foibles and problems. But his problems aren't insurmountable, thanks to his creativity and determination, and to the willingness of others to meet him partway at times with compassion or a shift in habits or expectations. He's not asking to pull less weight than others because of his disability, but only to be allowed to pull the weight in the ways that he is able, without barriers placed in his way.
Working in Jerusalem gave Hockenberry a unique vantage point for observing the US and its relation to handicapped people. He writes "It is very American to make these ironclad distinctions between the individual merit of a person and opportunities for advancement that have to do with family connections, wealth, wheelchairs, race, and other intangibles...In America the primary virtue is in doing something `despite the wheelchair,' or `even though you are black or a woman.' Succeed by incorporating what makes you different into your goal and you are perceived as having cheated." Later he notes "In America access is always about architecture and never about human beings. Among Israelis and Palestinians, access was rarely about anything but people. While in the U.S. a wheelchair stands out as an explicitly separate experience from the mainstream, in the Israel and Arab worlds it is just another thing that can go wrong in a place where things go wrong all the time." Hockenberry notes how far people in Jerusalem were willing to go out of their way to help him when the terrain was inaccessible, and contrasts that with his experience trying to use the New York subway, where most people refused to even look at him, let alone offer to assist him in stations without elevators.
Having lived in the Middle East myself for five years, I think Hockenberry was probably right about Israelis and Palestinians more readily acknowledging the humanity of situations involving access for wheelchairs. But I'm not sure that non-disabled Americans are intentionally uncompassionate. As Americans, we are taught that disabled people wish to be independent and don't want any attention drawn to their special circumstances, and they don't want us to push their chairs or grab their white canes. We assume that because there is a law guaranteeing access for all, that access exists and is sufficient and already present in the buildings where it is required. Once the law has been put in place, we assume any needs have already been met. Most of us are unfamiliar with the needs of disabled people- -we don't know how to act around disabled people, what we should do, and what we shouldn't, so perhaps that's why we try not to see the disabled. In that respect, this book fills a dire need: it brings us into the day-to-day life of a remarkable yet ordinary disabled person, introducing us to his life story, dreams, and desires.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best autobiographies I've ever read...
Review: This is one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. Hockenberry, a former NPR correspondent, opens his book with a chapter about hiking on donkey-back up into the inhospitable mountains where the Kurds fled after the Gulf War. This passage would have been extraordinary anyway, except that Hockenberry is a paraplegic (having been injured in an auto accident when he was 19). The book spans the period of time from the debilitating accident to his days at NPR.
I am not close to anyone who is disabled and was completely unaware of the sorts of subtle discrimination goes on between the walking/seeing/hearing world and those who are unable to do those things. Oddly (or not!) Hockenberry found that it was when he was outside the US that he felt most natural and most normal. That people throughout the Middle East didn't view him with pity or a questioned eye. Ignorant Americans, on the other hand spent a good deal of time asking him questions like, "So, did you ever consider suicide?" As though death would have made him feel better about not being able to walk!
What made this book so important and powerful for me was not that this man had wheeled through Beirut in his wheelchair or had wheeled through Israeli roadblocks out of Gaza in 1987, but that he is able to view the moments of his life not as a `crip' (as he calls it) but as a human being learning about and coping with himself (as we ALL have to do, whether we can walk or not!). He does not disregard his disability but instead of seeing it as such sees it more as an inconvenience with which he has learned to live just fine, thank you very much. And he writes with such clarity and at times, such humor, that a reader is compelled to laugh and grow with him, in addition to being made more aware in a subtle manner of what kinds of obstacles he faces. I must add that there is a chapter involving an old girlfriend in Chicago that is worth the price of the book alone. This book is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Great read for new para's
Review: Upon my discharge from rehab after becoming a paraplegic myself, there was a long list of recommended books and a stack of books that had been given to me by well intending friends and family. These books were sterile and had been written by walking people. This book is a fantastic departure from the clinical spinal cord injury books. This book helped prepare me in a very different way than the help I received from family, friends, doctors or therapists for some of the wide variety of challenges I now face in daily living. This book is simply a must read for new paraplegics and their families. Honestly, I would prioritize this over the books from Christopher Reeve.
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