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Brimmer, Gabriela. Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Three Voices. By Gaby Brimmer and Elena Poniatowska. Trans. Trudy Balch. Foreword Judith E. Heumann and Jorge Pineda. Introd. English-language edition by Lauri Umansky. Afterword Avital Bloch. Waltham: Brandeis UP; UP of New England, 2009. 200 pp. ISBN 9781-5846-5758-3. 200
This as-told-to autobiography presents an amazing story. Although Elena Poniatowska developed the text from a combination of interviews with Gaby Brimmer's mother (Sari Dlugacz) and caregiver (Florencia Morales), the primary voice is that of Mexico-bom disability rights activist and writer Gaby Brimmer (1947-2000). Gaby was bom as the second of two surviving children in Mexico City to Miguel Brimmer and Sari Dlugasz, Viennese-Jewish refugees. Shortly after birth, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Her mother's voice recalls her horror at seeing for the first time, in her new-bom child, the characteristic spasms that arched and shook her body. Gaby, by contrast, is philosophie about the now-routine tests that might have prevented the condition, which was caused by the rH incompatibility of her parents' blood, and produced her profound physical disability.
Throughout her life, Gaby completely depended on others to walk, dress, feed or use the bathroom. Her brain was completely unaffected by her palsy, but she had to battle for access to education. With the big toe of her left foot, she used an alphabet board to talk with visitors, and she composed many poems and swathes of letters, using an electric typewriter that she named "Che." For this, she drew on assistance, in part from her parents and occasionally, her brother. Most often and dramatically, however, Gaby depended on her caregiver, Florencia Morales, a family "servant" or rather, Nana, whom Gaby describes as her "second mother," whose own schooling ended when she turned thirteen. After years of uncertainty as a poor servant to the very poor, followed by drifting in various businesses and homes for over twenty years, Florencia came, at the almost iconic age of thirty-three, to the Brimmer household. Florencia maintains contact with her family of origin even as she takes on an increasingly central and, for Poniatowska. unsentimentalized role in the Brimmer family.
Childhood and education concern the earlier pages of the narrative. Unsurprising in autobiography, the influence of family is a pervasive concern....