Published in England in 1987, this first-person account tells the story of a boy born spastic as a result of a difficult delivery. He arrived with cerebral motor damage, yet blessed with an intelligence far above the normal range. It is precisely this intelligence that drives him to break through the social and cultural barriers imprisoning him within the label "spastic, therefore mentally deficient." In this book, he challenges society itself. Like a clumsy new Don Quixote, he takes up the struggle on behalf of countless human beings like himself—overlooked for centuries by a society too absorbed in the comfort of its rich, beautiful, and healthy members; a society deaf and blind to the silent cries of anguished fear and profound sorrow from these lesser gods among its children.
His determination to become a voice for the voiceless drives him to search within himself for a way to communicate his deepest experiences through the written word, since he cannot speak. And so his fight begins—for the rights of the disabled like himself.
The Right to Written Speech
It took many years. Many people helped him along his long and painful road. His family, first and foremost. Specialized teachers working with the disabled. Schools for disabled children and mainstream schools. Medical researchers who discovered a new medication capable of releasing his body from the electrical surges that controlled it. Computer scientists who found ways to make it easier for him to press letters on a keyboard. And more. But in the end, Christopher Nolan, a spastic boy born in the twentieth century, can feel more than satisfied by the results of his "awareness campaign" on the condition of one of many spastic children. He received three literary prizes in England and one in Ireland—all by 1987. The future remains a blank page waiting to be filled.
The Right to a Place in Society
His next move: a place in a mainstream school alongside his able-bodied peers. Here we find the crucible of his intellectual formation—in peaceful exchange with teachers and classmates, in his family's steadfast support, in friendships with young people who will become society's future. In a public school where children of every social class gather, the presence of a handicapped boy creates problems for everyone. Christopher Nolan brought there a quiet revolution whose consequences for Ireland, and in a real sense for the wider world, carry tremendous weight.
...and Recognition of His Intellectual Worth
This becomes his next target. He refuses to keep the treasure he knows he possesses locked away within himself. With stubborn force, he seeks and obtains knowledge of the truths surrounding the human condition—the limits of understanding mysteries such as life, death, and above all, suffering. In this formative period of his soul, we encounter his moral anguish, his fierce struggles with religious and Christian values. The simple faith of a child, his prayers, his consolation in the caress of a good God and in love made bread in the Eucharist, the reverence of a handicapped child unable to open his mouth to receive the Sacrament of peace—these things make him tremble in advance, unsettling everyone around him: his family, his priest, and most of all himself. But this trusting, believing child becomes an adolescent, and that consoling God no longer suffices. His discovery of the condition that impoverishes his body makes him rebel against his Creator. He falls into the dark and subtle temptation of pride. The dramatic scenes recounting this spastic boy's temptation and repentance—alone as never before in facing his moral infirmity; the remarkable resources he finds in his wounded soul to make himself understood by his Father in heaven, to ask forgiveness; and by his earthly father, to convince him to take him to church to find his third father, the spiritual one, to confess his fault—these are pages written with literary skill and poetic realism.
The Right to Be Among the Chosen
Aware of the beauty of the gift of poetic expression entrusted to him for the common good, the boy begins to play with words that dance joyfully in his mind. He invents new words, brings forth others whose origin he cannot explain, words that place themselves within the history of his country, in its legends and mythical tales. These words, eager to emerge and describe new fragrances, new colors, and a different way of seeing the relationship between human beings and nature, shed him of his weakness as a boy, of his infirmity. Refusing another temptation—that of feeling wronged and retreating into the comfortable atmosphere of his family where he feels loved—he asks to join the reformers, the educators, those who show the way forward for future generations: a person bearing a universal message of human solidarity, a symbol of justice and peace. For his peace is our peace: no one can be truly happy so long as another suffers from society's indifference or from a society that chooses not to see suffering.
The Right to Life
The spastic boy emerges from his struggle stronger than before. He does not stop at the fleeting joy of literary prizes. Intelligent as he is, he seizes the opportunity this acclaim offers, using every means of communication—radio, television, lectures—to advance the cause of the disabled and to demand, once again, another right. The most contested, the most difficult right. The one that has made him suffer most: the right to life. He issued this challenge during the presentation of a new award, dedicated to "Person of the Year." He entered the hall in his wheelchair, dressed handsomely for the occasion. The entire audience rose to their feet in unanimous applause. He remained composed, watching his mother—she who would read the words her son could not speak. She read: "The future of these children is now threatened by a society that recommends aborting spastic infants, determined to discover the state of handicap before birth, invading the womb to insert the sentence of death and to fill mothers with fear of their arrival. Yet the spastic child will never be a man who kills, wounds, deceives, or hates his brothers. Why does this society fear the handicapped child? Why does it greet a healthy, normal child with joy and celebrate one who may in time become a potential murderer?"
- Teresa Barnes, 1990