Description
An Ordinary Baby
Tales of Childhood Resistance
All-powerful adults organise the lives of children but rarely take into account the fact that children have minds of their own, disabled children even less so. This account is a remembered story of one such child, born in 1950 with an impairment called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or ‘Brittle Bones’.
Micheline invites you to experience the world from her point of view and, in particular, how she developed and executed an escape plan from the segregated and shrunken world that most people expected her to inhabit for the rest of her life.
Her story highlights some horrific memories of children’s wards back then but also the good times: the fun and support given to her by her unusual working-class family.
Her own illustrations add images to the words, giving the reader a sense of how her identity as an artist/activist began to develop and eventually led her onto the world stage.
Micheline Mason is a life-long Artist/Activist and Writer. She was born in the 1950s to a working-class family, a fireman’s daughter.
At four days old she was diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or Brittle Bones, seen then as a severe ‘handicap’ which would define her life.
Her struggle against any such false limitations led her to help disabled people to develop the concept of disability as a social oppression, kept in place by segregation and loss of human rights, which needs to be constantly challenged.
Since becoming a mother she campaigned for a fully inclusive education system to become a right for all children.
She is now 71, ‘retired’ and living in London, with more time than ever to stir things up.
