Summer: A Master Class in How to Write the Human Story

Woody Brown blows open the doors of an adult day care community of verbal and nonverbal adult clients and staff that will leave your every bias and feeling revealed. He does it in a way and with a background so poignant that the novel and the author become a voice you cannot un-hear. Brown is an award-winning young man of 25, who is also the first Nonverbal graduate of UCLA and Columbia where he majored in English and Creative Writing. Every word in this transformational book he spelled out to his mother on what is called a Letterboard. He casts light onto young adults with various challenges ranging from Autism to Down Syndrome to Cerebral Palsy, spending their days at an Adult Day Care facility that infantilizes them because it is assumed that people who cannot speak are still children on the inside.

"There are various rooms, patios, and a dinky, kidney-shaped pool surrounded by cracked concrete in the back. Most of the action (a term that applies very loosely) takes place in a large rec room in the center. Picture a nursing home rec room that hasn't been updated since the first Bush administration....The schedule for the day is scribbled on a big whiteboard in hourly increments. It is one infantilizing activity after another...One day feels like forever."

This is no soapbox - it is a breathtaking array of different points of view. Every chapter is told from the perspective of a different person at the Center (Upward Bound) - the Director, the Lifeguard, the guy with Movie-Star- Looks in the wheelchair, the tough but tender Aides, and so on - the people who make this crummy place where we put people who cannot work but have families that have to work to support their needs.

If you are just trying to write better or maybe have an interest in human rights or education or physical therapy - this is a must-read. This book hit me at a soul level - it gave me the voice of my fears and my hopes in one volume, because I have a son with a challenge and I do not want this life for him. Brown grabbed my heart and my emotional register and never let go. It took me two weeks to finish reading this book aloud to my son, and never without tears - I will keep it in my collection forever:

"'I would really like Walter to participate in the holiday show. He never got to do that sort of thing when he was growing up...' Dave shakes his head and makes sympathetic clucking noises. Internally he's rolling his eyes. Have you met Walter? he feels like asking her. What do you think he can do? ...Walter's mom goes away satisfied. Dave sighs as he sits back down and tries to figure out where he can stick Walter where he'll be the least disruptive. Oh well...a directorial challenge....Dave keeps glancing at his watch, anxious to start the rehearsal....He notes wryly that Walter is among the missing."

This book is a masterpiece of introspection, viewer analysis and cultural critique of the abled and differently abled. Just when you think the language used is simple - or plain - he hits you with a high-flier word or turn of phrase that knocks you off balance. I hope he writes another 100 books that emote as well as this one does:

"The staffers obviously felt no urgency to set up our next activity. You could tell that it didn't even occur to them that we might mind being left waiting. As if time means nothing to people who have nothing but time. I think it's the opposite. Our time is wasted so profligately that we cherish it for what it might be, not for its emptiness."

In summary: this is a Master Class!