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Beautiful Mystery : Living in a Wordless World.

e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection 2025 Available online

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Rutherford, Danilyn.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Rutherford, Danilyn--Family.
Rutherford, Danilyn.
anthropology.
grief.
Anthropology.
Mothers and daughters.
Disability studies.
Grief.
Communicative disorders--Patients--Family relationships.
Communicative disorders.
Mothers of children with disabilities--United States--Biography.
Mothers of children with disabilities.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (241 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
Place of Publication:
Durham : Duke University Press, 2025.
Summary:
"In Beautiful Mystery, Danilyn Rutherford reflects on her relationship with her disabled daughter Millie in a genre somewhere between ethnography, autobiography, and memoir. Rutherford's daughter was born with what at first seemed like severe autism but turned out to be an even more challenging inability to communicate in recognizable ways. Her husband dies suddenly while Millie is still young and Rutherford explores her daughter's journey from disabled child to disabled young woman, demonstrating the challenges of caring for a loved one and finding ways to communicate. Meditating on the cognitive mystery of Millie's disability and interior life, Rutherford writes from the perspective of a mother, widow, and anthropologist to trace a process of becoming and vulnerabilities in a mother-daughter relationship. She draws on the power of anthropological theory to assess her personal journey, convey the intimacy of interacting with disability, and imagine Millie's magnetic yet unknowable social worlds"-- Provided by publisher.
Contents:
Worlds Without Words
Ieaving the Ground
What to Expect
Diagnosis
Early Intervention
What Millie Remembers
No Future
The Lessons
Proximity to Disability
The Sovereignty of Vulnerability
Becoming an Operating System
Proprioceptive Sociality
Millie's Flock
Cross Country
What Social Worlds Are Made Of
The Rest of a Life
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
ISBN:
1-4780-6145-6
OCLC:
1528565566

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