Trapped: My Life With Cerebral Palsy (Book) Review
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What is it really like to be disabled in a world that seems filled with people able to run, jump, dance, and make love, seemingly without thought or care? Fran Macilvey will tell you, and you will never think about those things in quite the same way ever again.
Thankfully, many of us will never truly know what it is to go through life with a disability. Many around us are doing just that, though, and often with little to no understanding or compassion from the able bodied people around them. Yes, sometimes that’s do to callousness or cruelty, but for the most part it is simply a byproduct of being uneducated on what the life of a disabled person is like. Whether you as a reader are seeking an understanding of those around you, or are seeking someone who knows somewhat what it is that you are going through, Trapped is an eye opening tale that really gets at the heart of things.
Fran Macilvey knows all too well what life is like with a disability. Born in the ‘60s in a hospital in the Belgian Congo, her cerebral palsy resulted due to suffocation that happened at birth. In Trapped: My Life With Cerebral Palsy, Macilvey lays bare her life, from those first moments when her survival was in question, to a childhood spent trailing behind her siblings and marching off to a series of painful medical interventions, to an adulthood spent finding herself in the truest sense of the term.
As a memoir, Trapped is a fascinating journey of a life that is quite interesting and distinct. From her beginnings in the Congo as the child of a diplomat, to vacations at various war torn countries around the world, to an adolescence spent in boarding schools, Fran Macilvey’s life is far from ordinary. Reading about her unusual childhood is entertaining in its own rite. But when you add the unfiltered insights she includes on what it was like going through that life as a disabled person, it creates a tale that is unique both for its candor and the wisdom it imparts. It is an honest look inside a life, with all the highs and lows that brings, that has so much to offer in terms of education.
What is it really like to be disabled in a world that seems filled with people able to run, jump, dance, and make love, seemingly without thought or care? Fran Macilvey will tell you, and you will never think about those things in quite the same way ever again.