Fiona Place
Fiona Place has always been interested in women, language and identity. She is the author of Cardboard: A Woman Left for Dead, which won the National Book Council Qantas Award for New Writers in 1990. It is a novel about one woman’s life-threatening eating disorder and eventual hard-won recovery. She has written numerous short stories and poems published in literary journals including Meanjin, Southerly and Westerly. She has also worked as a financial commentator for major newspapers including The Australian Financial Review and The Australian. Today she combines motherhood with her work as a writer and an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities. Her essays on disability appear in peer-reviewed journals including Down Syndrome Research and Practice.
Fiona Place
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