“Like Patti Smith and Sally Mann, Lehrer opens a vein and spills wisdom and humor, lyricism, and conviction onto the page. “This searing personal history expands Lehrer’s project of looking at our bodies inside and out, in all their queerness, fragility, and strength, into a stunning new dimension.” -Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home Packed with photographs of her own life as well as about fifty reproductions of her brilliant portraiture, this daring opus stands as a fittingly visual testament to the ‘radical visibility’ she advocates as a teacher and a person-a beautiful meditation on monstrousness, bodies and the souls they contain.” -Minneapolis StarTribune With vast ambition and the skill to match, Lehrer examines learning on every level-learning to live, to forgive, to create, to love, and to become a part of various communities: familial, queer, disabled and artistic.
sexy and soulful, Lehrer’s writing exhibits the force of will needed to make one’s way in a culture where, ‘If it’s medically possible to push a body toward that social ideal, then we make it a moral imperative to do so.’. “Lehrer’s story is a revelation of an inner subjective life-full of tragedy, love, and creativity-pushing against the external social stigmas, cultural narratives, and prejudices surrounding disability. She admits a felt kinship with other “monsters” because their bodies were also “built by human hands,” but unlike them, she is her own purpose, her own meaning, her own unstoppable golem.” -Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears
This audio production includes a PDF of illustrations and photographs from the book, which are also uniquely described aurally in the audiobook. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human. Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits-inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark-it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless.
Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.Įverything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible creatures? “ Golem Girl is luminous a profound portrait of the artist as a young-and mature-woman an unflinching social history of disability over the last six decades and a hymn to life, love, family, and spirit.”-David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies