Portrait of the Artist's Mother: Dignity, Creativity and Disability
I am seen by many as a danger. As having failed to understand the new rules, the new paradigm of successful motherhood.
A memoir and an examination of the politics of disability. Fiona Place describes the pressure from medical institutions to undergo screening during pregnancy and the traumatic nature and assumptions that a child with Trisomy 21 should not live, even though people with Down syndrome do live rich and productive lives. Fiona's son, Fraser, has become an artist and his prize-winning paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Sydney and Canberra. How does a mother get from the grieving silence of the birthing room through the horrified comments of other mothers to the applause at gallery openings?
This is a story of courage, love and commitment to the idea that all people, including those who are 'less than perfect', have a right to be welcomed into this increasingly imperfect world.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581751 | Paperback | 234 x 153 mm | 312 pp
Endorsements
Fiona Place is one of our great truth-tellers. There is no other writer like her.
—Amanda Lohrey, award-winning fiction writer.
DIGNITY, CREATIVITY This is a wide-ranging, deeply personal examination of the writer’s approach to parenting AND DISABILITY a son with Down syndrome. There is no sugar-coating, no ‘angels’ or ‘forever children’, but the very real life, great love and perceptive thinking of one mother, one son, one family, forging a good life in twenty first century Australia.
—Jill O’Connor, disability advocate
A powerful must-read book with three strands. Fiona shares her own life as she explores the impact of childhood family relationships on later motherhood, the rights and abilities of individuals with Down syndrome and questions the ethics of current termination programmes. I hope this book provokes widespread debate of these issues.
—Professor Sue Buckley OBE, psychologist, Down Syndrome Education International
Portrait of the Artist’s Mother illuminates all that is wrong with a society that expects children and mothers to be ‘perfect’. With carefully crafted prose, Fiona Place pushes back against negative assumptions that people with Down syndrome cannot have engaging and fulfilling lives. Her work, irradiated by her love for her son Fraser, is a delight to read. —Jessica White, author of Hearing Maud Written with extraordinary courage and searing honesty, the author takes the reader on a vivid, sometimes painful, yet life-affirming journey of hope. This book both commands and deserves attention as a creative work and provides unique insight into disability and motherhood.
—Miriam Stevenson PhD, disability consultant
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Giving birth
Chapter 2 Fraser’s gestation
Chapter 3 Caring for sick children — and learning about dignity
Chapter 4 Choosing motherhood
Chapter 5 How had I imagined motherhood?
Chapter 6 A life lived differently
Chapter 7 Bringing Fraser home
Chapter 8 Filling the little years
Chapter 9 Disabilities plural
Chapter 10 Falling pregnant for the third time
Chapter 11 Health issues
Chapter 12 I mother within a far larger context
Chapter 13 My mother’s side of the family
Chapter 14 The Place family home
Chapter 15 The Baker gatherings
Chapter 16 Mothering without a mother
Chapter 17 “Mothering” Annette
Chapter 18 How many Australians experience a disability?
Chapter 19 What does it mean to experience an intellectual disability?
Chapter 20 Choosing the “right” school
Chapter 21 A history of the “unfit”
Chapter 22 School and childcare — the drop offs and pick ups
Chapter 23 Mothers supporting mothers
Chapter 24 Owing Angus — a responsibility shared
Chapter 25 Do you get respite?
Chapter 26 An overnight excursion — negotiating illness and a disability
Chapter 27 Transitioning to Middle school — the Vineland
Chapter 28 Do you work?
Chapter 29 How did Fraser discover his creativity – his passion for drawing and painting?
Chapter 30 Senior school – mainstream or “special” school?
Chapter 31 Fraser and the New South Wales police force
Chapter 32 Prizes, competitions and exhibitions — a world shared
Chapter 33 Facing a terrifying set of symptoms
Chapter 34 Post school options
Chapter 35 Imagining the future, imagining the choices that may lie ahead to a whole new generation of mothers
Read more about Portrait of the Artist’s Mother in this special extract on Yahoo Lifestyle, October 2020.
Reviews
At times raw in description and emotion, and at all times honest, this book is written in a readable, narrative style. I recommend it to all interested in a deeper understanding of families with lived experience of intellectual disability, and those who wish to be challenged to value diversity in our society.
—Julian Trollor, Australian Psychiatry Journal
... heartbreaking, honest and ultimately uplifting work of creative non-fiction exploring the social, political, and personal implications of raising a child with a disability. Place weaves together three distinct narrative threads, examining through medical, social and personal lenses the realities of being a mother to a child, named Fraser, with Down syndrome. This lends the narrative a multidimensional air, which serves to further reinforce the raw nature of her story and highlights the multifaceted approaches taken towards disability, and peoples with disabilities, in contemporary Australian society.
Read the full review here.
—Alexandra Pilling, Westerly Magazine
In all the layers of Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, there is a fundamental truth; if we want to understand the present, we need to see where we have come from. Fiona Place has done this with courage, honesty, passion for change and clearly, much love. Portrait is rich, raw and complex but immensely readable. I have highlighted so many passages and am bursting to read them out loud to anyone!
...Portrait should be read and shared far and wide; not only with parents, but on school and university curriculum and on reading lists for health and allied health professionals, educators, service providers and community decision makers.
Read the full review here.
—Jackie Softly, Voice Magazine
This joyful and deeply moving book interlaces the many aspects of Fiona's and Fraser's lives to craft a compelling story. It leaves many varied imprints on the heart of the reader.
Read the full review here.
—Selena Ewing, Mercatornet
This is the story of a woman who defied the conventional wisdom that a child with Down syndrome is to be avoided at all costs...Her straight-talking self-portrait, which is also a portrait of her son, Fraser, a gifted artist, exposes the enormous pressure on women to terminate unborn children with detectable disorders. She doesn't downplay the difficulties her family confronted or the extra support Fraser required. But in welcoming and accommodating difference, she shows what the future could look like.
—Fiona Capp, Fairfax Media (The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald)
This will be such an important book for everyone in our community. Put simply, Fiona writes glorious prose. That she has turned her attention to a long form reflection on parenting, creativity and disability is a cause to celebrate. It is for us, as readers, to recognise the experiences Fiona articulates because we share them. Here in the DSNSW Library we are almost beside ourselves with excitement!
—Down Syndrome NSW Library, Keeping Up with DS Blogspot
Current debates about prenatal genetic testing choices and questions about what constitutes a “life worth living” make Fiona Place’s memoir, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, a pertinent read. Place’s son, Fraser Pollock, is an award-winning artist known mostly for his evocative abstracts. Place is herself an award-winning poet and writer. However, this shared creativity between mother and son are only aspects of the memoir that, I believe, ultimately seeks to grapple with the complex questions, “who deserves a life and who gets to choose?”
...In many ways, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother is Place’s answer to the question, “what makes a life worth living?” Her answer is deceptively simple: “I am a writer and Fraser is an artist. I am his mother and he is my son. We are who we are” (p. 299).
—Dr Elizabeth Smith, Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities