Parisian Phoenix Publishing

I ended up reading Christy Brown’s My Left Foot this weekend. (The movie stars Daniel Day Lewis. I watched that also.) Christy, born in 1932 as a middle child in an Irish Catholic family of 22 children, had cerebral palsy. The only limb he could control was his left foot— and he even learned to paint (and had gallery shows) with his left foot.

For the writers out there: Christy includes a couple chapters about his experiences writing his memoir, when he had never received a formal education. At first he used his younger brothers and scribes. Eventually, he learned to type.

For the memoir readers out there: Christy uses clear and yet playful language to tell his story. The movie does not do his tale justice, though the movie does let us know he got the book published and ended up married. The book shows his role in the family, explores his disability, but also chronicles his creative journey as both an artist and a writer.