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list price: $23.95
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Fiction
published: Apr 2023
ISBN:9781774390672
publisher: NeWest Press

I (Athena)

by Ruth DyckFehderau

tagged: literary, feminist, disabilities & special needs
Description

 

When Athena was a young girl in the 60s, she lost her hearing to a childhood fever but was misdiagnosed as "profoundly retarded" and institutionalized for thirty years. Now she's out of the institution, awkward and bookish, and learning to integrate with mainstream society where nothing works quite like she thinks it should. Athena researches her past, trying to understand why she was institutionalized in the first place and why the people looking after her made such a huge mistake. At the same time, she tries to find a way to live with the man who was her lover in the institution, uncovering all sorts of surprises along the way.

About the Author

Ruth DyckFehderau is an instructor in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Alberta and a freelance writer; she also enjoys travel. She has published in literature journals and anthologies around the world, and has received awards for her writing, teaching, and activism. She won several book awards for The Sweet Bloods of Eeyou Istchee.

Awards
  • Short-listed, Alberta Book Publishing Awards Book Cover Design
Editorial Review

Praise forI (Athena)

"Ruth Dyck Fehderau is a master in that beautiful art of the slow reveal. She has created in Athena a character I will not soon forget. Athena's story is fascinating and piercing, sometimes funny and sometimes utterly heart-rending; it is thoroughly researched and so well told. I read with wonder from the opening pages to the delightful final scene."

-Astrid Blodgett, author of You Haven't Changed a Bit

"As Athena breaks free from her stolen years, she's plunged into a world she must make sense of. By turns funny and heart shattering, rich with mesmerising detail and unsentimental prose, her journey is a profound exploration of what it means to be human."

-Fran Kimmel, author of The Shore Girl and No Good Asking

"In this harrowing, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant novel, Ruth DyckFehderau peels back the complex layers of identity and shows us, in moving, clear-eyed prose, how swiftly human rights can be stolen and how urgent is the fight to win them back."

-Frances Peck, author of The Broken Places

"A catastrophic misdiagnosis shunts a young life off the rails, leaving young Verity Blessure to waken, again and again, to worlds that profoundly mistake her. In I, Athena, Ruth DyckFehderau leads us on a memorable quest for human recognition and dignity through the eyes of the irrepressible Verity (Athena). A journey full of surprises, both wrenching and joyous, I, Athena also uncovers along the way the endlessly resourceful bonds of longing and belonging among the socially discarded and historically spurned, immersing us in a community that remains too often unseen, unheard, unwritten, to this day. A debut novel that on multiple levels reflects a triumph of informed empathy and imagination."

-Christine Wiesenthal, author of Instruments of Surrender and editor of The Collected Works of Pat Lowther

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