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What If?: A Guest Post by Woody Brown
Discover Upward Bound, a center for disabled adults, complete with a cast of eclectic patients and their overworked caretakers. Offering unique perspectives from complex characters, Woody Brown intricately weaves delicate storylines with empathy and warmth, delivering an inspiring novel of acceptance and hope. Read on for an exclusive essay from Woody on writing Upward Bound.
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A wondrous, deeply affecting portrait of the interlocking lives at an adult day care center in Southern California, depicting an often overlooked community with extraordinary wit and grace—by a major new literary voice hailed as a “groundbreaking debut novelist” (Publishers Weekly)
I wrote Upward Bound because I wanted to explore the “what-ifs” of my life: What if I was never exposed to a method of communication like my letterboard? What if I ended up in an adult day care center, like Upward Bound, after aging out of the school system? What if I hadn’t had parents who refused to allow that to happen? I wanted to show readers what it’s like to be constantly underestimated and misunderstood. I wanted to let typical people know what it feels like to not be seen because of disability and how it feels when they refuse to look at us. I wanted to speak to the general population, those who have no intimate knowledge of profound disability. Mostly I just wanted to write a good book.
We read literature on two levels. The first entry are the areas that are strange to us. An unknown land, time, or culture. What have I to glean from this author’s world? The second, and the deeper layer, is where we recognize ourselves in the universal, the shared emotions. I can find myself in Dickens or Murakami. When no one writes about your culture, it doesn’t exist. The first, more literal level is a closed door that no reader can open, so no one can see the universality in your experience. The profoundly autistic person remains a mystery, so readers have no reference point to peer into their shared soul. I can see the universal in others, but others can’t see the universal in me. That invisibility is echoed in society at large and has everything to do with how we are marginalized.
I hope that my book will crack open the door for readers to see that they have more in common with me than they could have imagined. Being seen on the page creates a camaraderie that calms my lonely soul.