Story Circle Network
Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

May 1998
Waist-High in the World

Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled
by Nancy Mairs

Before our May 6 session, you might want to write out some of the answers to these questions. Better yet, try exploring them in your journal. Does writing about your responses to this book help to broaden or deepen your initial reaction to it?
  1. In the introductory section, "Plunging In," Mairs says that she'd love to write a best seller, but this book isn't going to be it. Why? There are plenty of "triumph-over-tragedy" memoirs on the market, and some of them are best sellers. (Angela's Ashes, Liar's Club, Autobiography of a Face -- you can probably name lots of others.) What might have kept Waist-High in the World from becoming a bestseller?

  2. If you were in Mairs' situation, what aspect of life would you find most diffucult to handle? Why? What does your answer suggest about you? How could you learn to deal with this aspect?

  3. Mairs insists that she finds herself "unusually privileged." What are some of the reasons for this statement? Do you feel she's being completely truthful? Why/why not? Memoir writers often take liberties with the truth -- why might this question of truthfulness be especially important with regard to this book?

  4. In the section called "Ups and Downs," Mairs describes her progressive disability, from its beginning to its inevitable consequences. Why does she begin this way? What is she attempting to achieve in this section?

  5. Waist-High is organized differently than the other two books we have read so far. How is its structure different? How did it feel different to you as you read it? What different reading challenges did this organization present to you?

  6. On page 44, Mairs says that as a teenager, "I was, as I was trained to be, disappointed in myself." What significance does that assertion have for her and her story? Is there a sense in which our own non-disabled bodies are in trouble? What significance does that have for our own stories?

  7. Mairs' life might seem grim, but her story is lightened by her tone. How would you describe this tone? What are some of the ways she achieves it? What effect did this tone have on you, as a reader? (You might make a list of examples that we can share and discuss.)

  8. Mairs clearly has a political agenda in this book, particularly in the latter sections. What is the relevance of her public agenda to her private life and her personal story?

  9. In a book called "Living to Tell the Tale", Jane Taylor McDonnell writes this:
    "The very act of writing is a part of recovery. In the telling, the writer becomers a survivor -- one who has changed, but lived to tell the tale. These narratives...seek to reconstitute the lost self and reconceive the traumatizing experience as a survivor's story. In them, the more mature writer can reflect with profound sympathy on that earlier self which suffered but did not yet know the meaning of the suffering. Furthermore, the best examples of this kind of writing are more than just private. They are also deeply spiritual and historical accounts that bear witness to some universal trauma experience on a personal level."
    Please think about the significance of McDonnell's statement to this book -- we'll talk about it at our session.