Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson
The physicians urged Grace’s parents to institutionalize her after stating that nothing more could be done. Grace, 11, meets Daniel on her first day at the Briar Mental Institute. Debonair Daniel, an epileptic who can type with his feet, has a distinct perspective on Grace. He sees her as someone to confide in, flirt with, and fight for. A heartbreaking, inspirational tale of love triumphing over all the difficulties.
Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson
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This would be a fabulously bizarre book topic. It concerns Grace, a girl with congenital abnormalities who later contracts polio, leaving her with a useless arm that she affectionately refers to as Nelson. Her family pays sporadic visits to her while she is in a facility. Other than that, it’s a tremendously vivacious and uplifting book about a terribly awful subject. During her time in this facility, she befriends a boy named Daniel who has no arms, types with his feet and tells many elaborate stories. Daniel converses with Grace as though she can speak, despite the fact that she hardly can.
The entire book is meant to show us that Grace is aware of everything she observes, therefore when she does a drawing of one of her caregivers, it is because she finds them to be unappealing and nasty. It’s a tragic story told in such a cheerful way, and you get the idea of someone who is at once tremendously strong and completely powerless. I believe this is why it’s so bizarre and unnerving.
Grace Williams, who was born into a middle-class household in the 1940s and has a disability, is typically institutionalized and largely forgotten. We read about life in the depressing asylums of the past as it is narrated by Grace, a character given a voice by the author. However, there is also enchantment in her friendship with Daniel, a dapper epileptic who can type with his feet, which develops into something far stronger.
A book that will leave you inconsolable with its descriptions of the horrors of life for the disabled in the 1960s and 1970s, but as it shifts to contemporary “Care in the Community,” Grace almost appears to lose something in her clean, orderly, busy world filled with caregivers. Grace doesn’t communicate her emotions very often, so it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. Instead, she acts them out by throwing tantrums or mumbling to herself. However, she and Daniel are clearly experiencing great sentiments. A work that shocks, educates and inspires the reader must unquestionably become a modern classic.
