Meet Eileen Cronin

Meet Eileen Cronin author of Mermaid, A Memoir of Resilience

Monday, February 10, 2014
7:00 pm
Koret Boardroom
Ed Roberts Campus
3075 Adeline Street (at the Ashby BART Station)
Berkeley

Proudly hosted by:

Ed Roberts Campus
UC Berkeley Disability Studies/Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society
Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University

Eileen will discuss and sign copies of Mermaid.
Mermaid will be on sale at the event. Cash only.

The Ed Roberts Campus is wheelchair accessible; Please contact Stevenson Munro at smunro@dredf.org for accommodations.

***In order to ensure that we can arrange accommodations, we ask that you let us know by 5:00 pm, Tuesday, February 4, 2014.***

Advance Praise for Mermaid:

“An irresistibly engaging story of physical limitation, family conflict, and personal triumph—and how well we come to know this immensely likable, refreshingly candid, funny, shrewd, and self-aware memoirist!”
—Phillip Lopate

“Written with an unvarnished pen, Mermaid spares no one, yet is fair, funny, and moving.”
—Rita Mae Brown

“Mermaid reminds us how the stories we tell and the ones we bury have the capacity to imprison or free us. Cronin’s deep tenderness is born from the astounding hurts she has endured in her amazing life. From her capacity to forgive is born a laughter that is the best kind of wisdom. This deeply alive and sensual women may sometimes forget she is wearing a wooden leg and we can laugh at the absurd consequences, but the reader can never forget this glimpse of our world through the eyes of a Mermaid.
—John Hockenberry

Eileen Cronin’s memoir of growing up in a family rife with contention, chaos, secrets, and mystery – as well as love — not only chronicles her determination to live a fully normal life even with her disability, it brings to light the qualities necessary for anyone to live honestly in this world. Mermaid tells of a true odyssey, and is impressive for its frankness, humor, and beauty.
—Jane Brox, author of CLEARING LAND

When she was three years old, Eileen Cronin’s world was turned upside down. Her parents had taken the family on a vacation that summer, piling all the kids in the car except for Eileen. Left home with her aunt and cousins, Eileen felt abandoned and singled out. For the first time in her life she not only felt different, but she also realized the truth—she was, indeed, different from every other person around her. Eileen did not have legs; hers ended at the knee, one above the knee on one side and one below it on the other; also, her fingers on her left hand had been webbed until a plastic surgeon reshaped them. Before that moment of stark realization, Eileen had never considered herself to be anything but a normal little girl, playing with her siblings, swimming, and crawling or “squiddling” around, where she aimed to outrun the neighborhood dogs. Beginning six months before kindergarten, as she was being fitted for the painful prosthetics that gave her a chance to walk, Eileen questioned and eventually demanded the truth from her mother about her legs. “Why?” she asked. “But why was I born without legs? What happened to me?” “You don’t have legs,” her mother told her, “because baby Jesus chose you to carry the cross!” Eileen never accepted that perspective, and it would force her eventually to choose between her family and religion or to redefine her identity.

In MERMAID: A Memoir of Resilience [W. W. Norton & Company; January 20, 2014; $26.95 hardcover] Eileen tells a story that is both traumatic and wildly funny about her journey of self-discovery. With an unbreakable spirit, she battles the universal themes of love, betrayal, and loss, and learns to cull the truth and beauty from those experiences to forge onward. Growing up in 1960s Cincinnati, Eileen was the seventh of eleven children, all born to high school sweethearts Joy and Dick Cronin. Dick ran a Volkswagen car dealership, watched sports on Sundays, and affectionately called Eileen “Trix.” Joy, once a promising artist and known as “the prettiest girl in Cincinnati,” was fiercely Catholic, perpetually pregnant, and could often be found smoking a cigarette with her sister or hosting a cocktail hour for priests on the family sun porch. Joy eventually suffered manic and depressive episodes that would require hospitalizations and electroshock therapy. Despite the upheaval, Eileen found solace in two brothers: one deeply religious and one gifted, handsome, and hilariously funny. She poured her imagination into short stories and poems. In high school Eileen made a circle of good friends and dated a boy steadily. She learned to drive, went to college, and moved to Boston and Washington, DC, for graduate school. Despite a roller-coaster love life, she ended up marrying a man who embodied the best of her family—humor and intelligence—but who devoted himself to Eileen and their family, even giving up his own career as a poet and critic to support the family and its devotion to the arts. With degrees in rehabilitation counseling and clinical psychology, Eileen built a private practice. She never gave up her writing. While she felt she “owed” her advocacy efforts to her peers with disabilities, Eileen found ways to merge her love of writing with her other passions.

Throughout her childhood, Eileen braved bullying and embarrassing questions brought about by her lack of legs. As a teen, thrilled when boys asked her out, she was confused about what sexuality meant for her. She felt happiest and most comfortable relaxing and skinny-dipping with her girlfriends, imagining herself “an elusive mermaid.” And, most of all, there was the taboo subject of her disability itself. From an early age, Eileen was acutely aware of the fact that others, including her family, felt embarrassed, ashamed, and frightened by her appearance. Yet, most—especially her mother—refused to speak about the subject. Even after learning about thalidomide and its horrific and heartbreaking side effects—first as a child in Catholic school and later as an adult during her studies—Eileen was still unsure if that drug was indeed the reason for her lack of legs. Aware that her parents took a trip to Germany—where thalidomide was legally approved for use—while her mother was pregnant with her, Eileen would question her mother over the years about the possibility of her having taken the drug, only to be vehemently shut down at every attempt.

Her mother’s staunch denial left Eileen frustrated. Was her mother telling the truth? If Eileen were to have children of her own, would they be healthy? Why did she always seem to find herself on the outside, looking in when it came to her family? A growing dependency on alcohol, a failing marriage, and the unexpected fame that came with the success of an article Eileen wrote for the Washington Post “Outlook” section did nothing to help the situation. Once again, though, Eileen’s inner strength came through, and she set out to pull herself up and push herself forward—just like she did when she was learning to walk—to a place where she would eventually find stability, love, acceptance, and most of all, peace. with her mother and with her own self.

Writing with honesty, wit, and grace, Eileen Cronin will entrance and move readers with her debut memoir.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eileen Cronin practices clinical psychology in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She is an assistant editor for Narrative magazine. Her work has appeared in several publications, including the Washington Post. She won the 2008 Washington Writing Prize in fiction.

TITLE: MERMAID: A Memoir of Resilience
AUTHOR: Eileen Cronin
ISBN: 978-0-393-08901-1
PUBLICATION DATE: January 20, 2014
PRICE: $26.95 hardcover
PAGES: 336 pages