Body, Remember Book

At thirty-five, Kenny Fries wanted to discover what could be learned about the history of his body and the map of physical and psychological scars that he had lived with since infancy. He began only with the description his father had given him. At birth, his legs were no bigger than fingers; both twisted like pretzels; neither had an arch to separate leg from foot; dimpled above what would have been his ankles. There was no scientific description of his disability; no reason for it had been given. So Fries turned to long-buried medical records, reconstructing the story of his disability just as his body had been reconstructed over countless surgeries. In these pages we learn not only what one man's disability has taught him but also gain intimacy with the connections between body and memory that are common to us all. • There is ongoing media interest in issues of "the body" and disability. The May 1997 unveiling of the FDR memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., has sparked further discussions of these issues. • Fries is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (Plume, October 1997).