Danilyn Rutherford is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. An award-winning anthropologist, she has previously taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Chicago. She is the author of Living in the Stone Age: Reflections on the Origins of a Colonial Fantasy, Laughing at Leviathan: Sovereignty and Audience in West Papua, and Raiding the Land of the Foreigners: The Limits of the Nation on an Indonesian Frontier. Rutherford lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Description
Prologue vii Worlds Without Words 1 1. Leaving the Ground 11 What to Expect 13 Diagnosis 21 Early Intervention 31 What Millie Remembers 47 No Future 55 II. The Lessons 69 Proximity to Disability 71 The Sovereignty of Vulnerability 91 Becoming an Operating System 107 Proprioceptive Sociality 133 III. Millie's Flock 149 Cross Country 151 What Social Worlds Are Made Of 163 The Rest of a Life 181 Epilogue 191 Acknowledgments 195 Notes 199 Bibliography 209 Index
"Danilyn Rutherford has given us a riveting and powerful chronicle. Her writing is luminous, moving, and deeply thoughtful. She carries us along on her path to knowledge gained over many years as she learns the most essential of life lessons from living with her disabled daughter Millie and the fellow travelers in the disability worlds she has traversed: What it means to be human in ways that embrace the vast diversity and 'beautiful mystery' of the bodyminds we are privileged to encounter." - Faye Ginsburg, coauthor of Disability Worlds "Beautiful Mystery is that rare and precious book: both an unforgettable personal story and a powerfully argued view of how to think about profound human difference. Beautifully written and deeply moving." - T. M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others