Poster Child: A Memoir by Emily Rapp

From the Publisher

Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she’d had dozens of operations and her entire leg below the knee had been amputated. She had also become the smiling, always perky, indefatigable poster child for the March of Dimes, and spent much of her childhood traveling around the Midwest making appearances and giving pep talks. All the while she was learning to live with what she called “my grievous, irrevocable flaw,” and the paradox that being extraordinary was the only way to be ordinary.

Poster Child is Rapp’s unflinching, brutally honest and often darkly humorous account of wrestling with the tyranny of self-image as a teenager and then ultimately coming to terms with her own body as a young woman. It’s about what it’s like to live inside a broken body in a society that values beauty above almost everything else.

Publishers Weekly

Rapp, a writing professor at Antioch University, has crafted a meditative, nuanced account of her life, which began with a grim prognosis after she was born in 1974 with a shortened leg. At first, her handicap is filtered through the prismatic fantasy of girlhood. "I felt singled out and special," she reflects, spinning stories of dragon attacks to enthralled schoolmates in Nebraska and Wyoming. In a childhood marked by surgeries and prosthetic fittings, she becomes a bubbly poster child for the local March of Dimes. As the daughter of a pastor and fiercely optimistic parents, Rapp prays earnestly for a normal leg even as she feverishly overcompensates for the artificial limb through witty verve and rambunctious horseplay. But in adolescence, she struggles with her image in the eyes of others. Her leg "may have been couture," she jokes, "but it certainly wasn't fashionable." Rapp's unrelenting push toward normalcy even takes her to Korea as a Fulbright scholar, where she must fend for herself even with a few hydraulic malfunctions. But she's too sharp and self-aware to either laugh her travails away or admit total defeat. Though she demonstrates daunting reserves of pluck, she isn't afraid to hold the sugarcoating and confront the irresolvable dilemmas. Her piercing metaphors and sudden, unexpected jabs of humor enhance the candid appeal of this "underdog" tale. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

At the age of six, Rapp (creative writing, Antioch Univ., Los Angeles) was a poster child for the March of Dimes. Born with one leg shorter than the other, she not only endured hip and knee surgery and the amputation of her left foot but was also plagued by chronic pain to her postoperative limb. Then, another type of pain followed rejection because of her wooden leg. Rapp's emotional journey parallels that of Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face), whose face was disfigured from cancer operations. Rapp's skillful detailing of her life from birth to adulthood is sandwiched between a prolog and a surprise ending. One discovers in the prolog that Emily became an overachiever and was a Fulbright scholar. Knowing this keeps the reader trudging through pages detailing her physical and emotional pain. At the book's end, readers will be shocked to learn that Rapp quit her Fulbright scholarship amid panic attacks. A quitter for the very first time, she finally accepted her physical self, which is her triumph. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Dorris Douglass, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Pat BangsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

Adult/High School
Rapp was an extraordinary child. Born with a congenital defect, she had her left ankle amputated at the age of four. Four years later, after dozens of surgeries, her entire leg below the knee was gone. Her parents—a Lutheran minister and a nurse—told her she could be anything she wanted. And she tried and reveled in the attention. She became the March of Dimes poster child, an amputee skier, and eventually won a Fulbright Scholarship to Korea. But this is not the story of her achievements. Instead, the book chronicles her poignant journey to make peace with her flaws. In exquisite prose and with keen self-awareness, Rapp imagines how her parents must have reacted to the child born with a deformed leg, the extremes they went to so that she could feel "normal," how much she loved being a poster child, and the church ladies' gifts and visits during her various surgeries. And then came her slow realization that what children had called her—"a cripple" and "peg leg"—was true and she didn't need to do it all. At book's end, Rapp and her parents find a box filled with every prosthetic device she ever wore, from a brace as a toddler to each new artificial limb as she grew to adulthood. It is an illuminating moment in her struggle to accept her disability. Young adults, often obsessed with defects both real and imagined, will identify with the author's need at first to be extraordinary, and then her final acceptance of the imperfect, but valued person she really is.

Kirkus Reviews

Mature and graceful debut memoir about a childhood struggle to be perfect. Born with a congenital bone and tissue disorder, the author had her left foot amputated when she was four and was fitted with an expensive, ugly prosthesis; at eight, after several operations, her entire left leg was removed. Rapp devoted her childhood to excelling, to being brave and smart: If I do everything just right, she reasoned, maybe I can make up for that missing leg. Despite her handicap, she biked and swam. She reveled in the compliments of the ladies at church, always clucking about her courage. She loved being told that she was an "inspiration." But as she entered adolescence, Rapp became more self-conscious. In particular, she worried that she would never catch a man. (She writes with elegance of losing her virginity.) Granted, she had good material to work with. Most people just have to grapple with getting the condom packet open; she had to decide whether or not to remove her leg. During college, her stoicism began to fray, and she wavered under the burden of her own attempts at perfection. In search of a new framework for thinking about disability, she discovered bold theologians who argue that a broken body-Jesus' broken body-sits at the center of Christianity. This should not be viewed only as a disability memoir. It is also a story of the 1970s and '80s (the author's recreation of a popular culture that included stonewashed jeans and too much eyeliner is spot-on), a spiritual memoir of the movement from childhood pieties to adult faith and a confession that will resonate with anyone who spent their youth overcompensating, for whatever reason. Rapp has excelled again: This book is a blessing.

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