After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a power wheelchair--but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor.

Lambert presents the adventures of flourishing within a world of uncertain tomorrows: kayaking alone through swamps with alligators; negotiating planes, trains, and ski lifts; scoring free drugs from dangerous men; getting trapped in a too-deep snow drift without crutches. A Certain Loneliness is literature of the body, palpable and present, in which Lambert's lifelong struggle with isolation and independence--complete with tiresome frustrations, slapstick moments, and grand triumphs--are wound up in the long history of humanity's relationship to the natural world.
Purchase the audio edition.

Author: Sandra Gail Lambert
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 09/01/2018
Series: American Lives
Pages: 210
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 8.70h x 7.74w x 0.53d
ISBN: 9781496207197


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2018
Shelf Awareness 09/07/2018

About the Author
Sandra Gail Lambert is a writer of both fiction and memoir. She is the author of The River's Memory. She was awarded an NEA fellowship based on an excerpt from A Certain Loneliness.