Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of survival and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible.

1. The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies Golem Girl is luminous; a profound portrait of the artist as a young—and mature—woman; an unflinching social history of disability over the last six decades; and a hymn to life.
2. ‘Golem Girl’ is much more than a confessional memoir — it is the story of an artist whose life has been lived both bravely and beautifully. But we also discover that Lehrer is as gifted as an.

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About the Author

Book: Golem Girl
Author: Riva Lehrer
Edition: Hardcover 2020

There is so much emotion in Riva Lehrer’s paintings and at the same time her writing is very procedural and intellectual. There are also non-sequiturs and asides that felt like inside jokes and kept me, as a reader, at arm’s length. Consequently, I was not immediately drawn into the memoir. However, right when I felt distanced from Lehrer, she would share an intimacy or a truism to ponder, and once again some creative or intellectual synapse would be sparked in my brain and I would be drawn in and looking for someone to have a conversation on othering or art or the Jewish culture or medicine or parent-child relationships. The myriad facets of this memoir offer substantial opportunity to create a rich, thought-provoking conversation. I highly recommend this book for your book group.

Of particular interest to me was Lehrer’s reflections on her recent past— this century— and how individuals who are disabled continue to be othered in our culture. And also, considering the whole of our species, what does it mean to “cure” the world of disability? What does humanity gain and what do we lose?

One wonderful aspect to the hardcover is the inclusion of her artwork in color. A Kindle reader would lose that, so I recommend (a rare recommendation) reading the hard cover over a Kindle version.

There is much informative and reflective online discussion sharing disability culture and barriers individuals with disabilities face. I recommend learning about a disability you may be less familiar with and the particular obstacles faced before you start your book discussion. For instance, learn how someone who is visually impaired confidently navigates a bus system, or learn about the challenges a wheelchair user faces that someone walking on foot might never realize exist.

Ableism encompasses interpersonal interactions and systemic discrimination. On the individual level, ableism is both the barriers faced and interpersonal interactions that diminish the status of an individual because of a disability. On the systemic level, ableism is in regulations and policies that restrict equity for people with a disability. In both cases there is discrimination in favor of non-disabled and neuro-typical people. In particular, differences are seen as deficits, which Lehrer weaves into her memoir. The Mighty, an outstanding resource, has a blog written during the Covid summer of 2020 that explains ableism, especially to folks who may not even realize they are inflicting micro-aggressions or otherwise discriminating. Forbes has an opinion piece exploring how to see both individual and systemic ableism. In addition, it provides some pointers on having a discussion on ableism without getting defensive.

Get your facts on disability for your location. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducts surveys and published data on the prevalence of disability. According to their data, 1 in 4 adults in the United States lives with a disability.

Here are just a few themes to get you or your book group started on your journey to reflect upon Riva Lehrer’s memoir and open a discussion about Disability culture.

Memoirs

I should say right up front that memoirs are not my favorite genre. And I feel that the ratings memoirs receive often reflect how the reader views the writer more than the written word. For me personally, I am a more engaged reader when the writing style draws me in and less engaged, no matter the content, when I don’t like the writing style. My favorite memoir is Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Not only is Noah’s story fascinating, his storytelling talent is unparalleled. I read the book several years ago and I can still picture Trevor Noah being tossed off the city bus as a child by his mother as she jumped after him holding his baby brother and his aunties fawning over him as his skin was lighter.

Often I feel guilty giving a low rating to a memoir by an amazing individual whose writing style didn’t work for me.

What about you? Does someone’s history draw you in regardless of writing style? What makes a memoir compelling for you? Why do you read memoirs?

How does Golem Girl stack up against other memoirs you have read? What was most compelling for you in this read?

Like many memoirs, Golem Girl includes photographs alongside moment’s in the author’s life. How do the photos impact your reading? Do they expand the story? Ground the story in reality?

Golem Girl also includes the author’s art work. How does the art impact your reading? Would the memoir have been equally compelling without the artwork included?

Art

Lehrer intersperses her art throughout her memoir and clearly Lehrer’s artistic expression is an integral element of her self.

At one point she shares what she sees as her job,

“Things that work beautifully as poems often make dreadful pictures. My job was to translate from the verbal to the visual.” page 267.

How do you feel looking at the artwork? How did you react to other people’s responses to the art as described in the memoir?

How have you used art in any media to express yourself, someone else, something you have observed? What do you think your role is in creating art? How can the power of art be used to create positive change?

Persistence of Disability

Disability. The word itself has the prefix dis-, meaning the opposite of or not. Often when discussing disability medically, there is the goal of eradicating a disability whether blindness or or spina bifida or Down syndrome or deafness.

In the memoir, Lehrer shares,

“Eli challenged ideas about what is “natural.” Disability was natural, as was queerness, and neither were in need of correction or eradication.” page 265

and when talking about working with the medical students she says,

“This is crucial: our students are tomorrow’s physicians, destined to pick and choose which disabilities will persist and which will be wiped away in the disability extinction known as modern medicine.” page 346

The Atlantic magazine has a recent article, The Last Children of Down Syndrome, with the subtitle Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning.

In it, the author writes,

“Meredith pointed out that Down syndrome is defined and diagnosed by a medical system made up of people who have to be highly successful to get there, who likely base part of their identity on their intelligence. This is the system giving parents the tools to decide what kind of children to have. Might it be biased on the question of whose lives have value?”

And in Golem Girl,

“My scoliosis was never seen as benign. My curvature was upsetting for others to look at, therefore harmful to society, ergo injurious to me.” page 147

“Nature is wayward and perverse: there is wild inside what we call abnormal.” page 347

Are there human physical or mental conditions whose elimination you think would improve human life? Would detract from humanity? What are some of the values to society that are here because of the breadth of the human bodily form and mental capacity?

In a recent NPR story, the journalist reports on the death of a young woman from Covid who had disabilities. In particular,

“Her death would raise another question, one that people with disabilities and the elderly have worried about since the start of the coronavirus pandemic: Are they denied care when it gets scarce — like drugs or treatment, including ventilators — that might save their lives?”

How should doctors be trained in the working with patients who have disabilities? How are the decisions made on what life is worth living, whether for a specific individual or for a hypothetical birth? Who should get to decide for a specific individual? For a hypothetical birth?

Ableism

Ableism encompasses interpersonal interactions and systemic discrimination. On the individual level, ableism is both the barriers faced and interpersonal interactions that diminish the status of an individual because of a disability. On the systemic level, ableism is in regulations and policies that restrict equity for people with a disability. In both cases there is discrimination in favor of non-disabled and neuro-typical people. In particular, differences are seen a deficits, which Lehrer weaves into her memoir.

Ableism is the hiring manager who shows a blind candidate to the door without interviewing her, because “this isn’t a job you could do.”

I haven’t learned how to read braille or converse in American Sign Language. I haven’t had to navigate a wheelchair down a crowded sidewalk or regularly talk to people twice my height. As Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico’s ambassador to Canada, says, “A person with a disability is incredibly resourceful. A smart company needs this untapped goldmine.” And yet, many hiring managers would be more skeptical of hiring someone who is blind or uses a wheelchair to get around, for no reason other than ableism.

Golem Girl A Memoir Story

Ableism is rushing to help a grocery shopper in a wheelchair open his car door and load his groceries without asking if he needs help.

As James Moore says in an article in The Independent,

Riva Lehrer Book

“Disabled does not mean incapable. How would you feel if someone suddenly came up behind you, grabbed you, and started pushing you?”

Ableim is saying, “I didn’t know what to do, I was paralyzed.”

Lydia X. Z. Brown has a blog that provides examples of ableist language. . Finding alternative words not only can avoid micro-aggressions and reinforcing stereotypes, the alternative language is often more precise.

Throughout her memoir Lehrer shares examples of ableism such as,

“I couldn’t believe it when viewers said, “Oh, the poor thing! She looks so happy! But isn’t she a dwarf?” As if being a Little Person precluded any happiness. I listened in despair as Tekki’s joy was twisted into pathos.” page 264

What are some of the ableist behaviors that you recall from the memoir? When have you seen ableist behavior either at the individual level or system level? Where have you caught yourself and stopped or apologized for your ableist behavior? When have you felt discriminated against as a person with a disability? What resources do you rely on to maintain your self-respect and independence? What resources have you found to recognize and then reduce your ableist actions?

“I want our students to think about the issue of the historical specimen; that we’re taught to see the Disabled as tragedies to be eradicated, as temporary “mistakes,” rather than bodies that have a real, present life.” page 345

Jewish Culture

Throughout the memoir, Lehrer’s Jewish culture is front and center. Right at the start she explains where her name comes from.

“‘Rivka Brian Yocheved.’ As always English name first, then Hebrew name… Ashkenazi families pull their children’s names from the afterlife; children begin life as phantoms of people they will never meet.” page 11

She describes her family’s Friday night Shabbos ritual, creating angels from the candle wax and placing them on the headboard. page 25.

She uses common Yiddish phrases such as Vey iz mir and describes her brother Meir’s Chabad Lubavitcher community as they sit shiva for Carole.

If you are familiar with or associate with Judaism, how did you feel reading a memoir embedded with Lehrer’s Jewish culture? Did that create a stronger connection for you? A belonging? If you were less familiar with Judaism, what did you learn? How do you express your raised faith and your adult faith? How does your faith shape your identity? How has that changed, deepened, morphed, relaxed over your life?

Intersectionality

I appreciated how Lehrer shared her own shortcomings in intersectionality, how she processed her experiences, admitted the gaps in her representation and worked to fill those gaps as she moved forward. She describes how at the 2002 Queer and Disability Conference, she hadn’t appreciated how her white privilege would be met with anger.

“Once there is the possibility of equitable representation, exclusion opens an even deeper wound.” page 271

She writes that she didn’t know how to respond. As she reflects on her encounters with a Latinix woman and the questions she received on the absence of people with invisible disabilities, she realized she had a long ways to go in understanding intersectionality. The absence of representation is an othering.

I met a black female wheelchair user at a conference. She shared that she felt called to speak up for the barriers she faced as a black woman, as a black person using a wheelchair, as a woman in a wheelchair and as a black woman in a wheelchair. She felt there were times when it was critical for her to embrace that intersectionality and work to take down barriers that were that much higher due to the intersectionality. For instance, she liked to visit historically black colleges and universities to talk about the obstacles women in wheelchairs face at college and in finding employment. She felt she was better at that role than a white woman in a wheelchair or a black woman who is ambulatory would be.

What is your intersectionality? Where do you feel privilege? Which aspects of your privilege do you use to speak up and bolster the voices of individuals who are marginalized? Where have you recognized gaps in your understanding of difference and discrimination even as you thought you were doing anti-discriminatory work?

Book Covers

I have found many children’s books with delightful book jackets and equally delightful designs on the hard cover beneath. However I find far fewer adult books have designs upon their hard cover apart from the title on the spine. Every once in awhile though, a surprise awaits under the book jacket. One of my favorites I have found is Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.

As I removed the dust jacket on Golem Girl, the front and back boards have her self portrait printed in repeat as she intended the two paintings to be displayed.

Why do you think she chose the overlay of the X-ray and the red sweater-clad torso for the dust jacket and her self-portrait for the binding?