Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs

by Marcy Sheiner and Suzanne Kamata

Book Overview

The first collection of literary writing on raising a child with special needs, Love You to Pieces features families coping with autism, deafness, muscular dystrophy, Down syndrome and more. Here,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807000302
• ISBN13: 9780807000304
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

well-chosen,eclectic anthology - not for the faint of heart

Wonderful anthology of mostly non-fiction pieces about caring for a special needs child, organized not by theme or date of publication but by age of the child - from birth through adulthood - which could feel contrived but doesn't, since there is no other effort to make these essays and stories hang together. They represent different times, cultures, and points of view. I liked some better than others, which will happen with any anthology...and the ones I liked, challenged my thinking deeply or moved me to tears. So I recommend this collection very highly. I will be giving it as a gift to my friends in the trenches of special needs parenting - but not to those who have newly arrived. This is NOT for someone who has just discovered that their child is autistic or that their baby will be born with Down Syndrome, etc. - it's much too raw for that.

an excellent collection

This is a wonderful collection of varied voices writing about parenting special needs children. I enjoyed the mix of essays, fiction, and poetry from mother- and father-writers; the pieces reflect an incredible range of experiences. The writing is honest, thought-provoking, poignant and brave. I'm not touched closely by the issues faced by these writers, yet as a mother still found plenty to relate to here.

Required reading for any parent

Suzanne Kamata's anthology offers a cross-genre and literary look into the heads and hearts of parents who work to raise children with special needs as they work to understand or accept their children's conditions, to challenge and accept views and needs of other family members, and to deal with social isolation and cultural silence about disability. What I most appreciated about this volume is the emotional range and vulnerability of the authors. In sharing their experiences, they raise larger social questions not just about disability but about the "normal" we all live in--as in Marie Myung-Ok Lee's excellent essay "Normal." The literary quality of the selections is impressive, including authors such as Bret Lott and Jayne Anne Phillips; I found the poetry to be of particularly high quality and insight. It would be a mistake to see this as a book compiled for those raising children with special needs. Most parents--and most humans--must face deep fears about losing the abilities and mobilities that give us access to the range of these so-called normal human experience. For this reason, the poems, stories, and essays in Kamata's anthology will speak to any reader from a place of profound honesty, insight, and subtlety. Not a cup of comfort here, but a strong swallow of intelligence and perseverance.

Beautiful Yet Honest

Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs is a beautiful tribute the the lives of parents who every day deal with the fact that their lives have taken a different turn than planned. With stories and poems by Bret Lott, Carol Zapata-Whelan, Michael Berube and more, Suzanne Kamata has collected experiences from a wide range of disabilities, reflecting a broad set of emotions. Some of the stories told are fiction, some non-fiction, but each gives voice to the day-to-day lives of these families in an artful and unique way. As the parent of a special needs child, I find myself constantly seeking out books containing the comforting voices of others who deal with the same challenges I do, and this book is a welcome addition to my collection.

Honest thoughts on Raising a Special Needs Child

Love you to Pieces is a collection of honest, raw, and emotional stories and poems about raising a special needs child. The disabilities the children have range from Fragile X and autism to Downs Syndrome and unspecified mental retardation. Rather than focus completely on the bad or the good, the mothers, fathers, and caretakers in these stories explain life in its small parts. They explain everyday things like trying to figure out what the speech delayed child wants right now to coming to terms with faith. Every stage in raising a special needs child is examines, from premature birth (and there are many in this book) to coping with sexuality. The quality of stories is a bit uneven-some are touching and scream with their emotion. Some are just dull. But what is touching to one parent can leave another cold. I was actually comforted by the scene of a mother so frustrated with her autistic daughter she actually beat her (made me feel like I wasn't that bad for punching the crap out of my pillow when my son gets to me), but it annoyed me to read about how one mother not only raised her child with spina bifida, but helped a mentally retarded child as a form of penence (though I did love it when she started whailing on cabinetry). This realistic look into the minds of the parent of special needs children is an excellent read for special ed teachers, parents, or anyone who should know how a parent copes. I would have liked to see more from the perspective of the fathers, though. And I hope this book inspires more publishers to produce works like this. I'm torn between wanting to just read about other parents dealing with autism and wanting to see the perspective of the other parents I meet at Special Ed night at my son's school.