Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life

Harriet McBryde Johnson

Macmillan, Feb 21, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 272 pages

A Washington Post Book World Rave

Harriet McBryde Johnson's witty and highly unconventional memoir opens with a lyrical meditation on death and ends with a bold and unsentimental sermon on pleasure. Born with a congenital neuromuscular disease, Johnson has never been able to walk, dress, or bathe without assistance. With assistance, she passionately celebrates her life's richness and pleasures and pursues a formidable career as an attorney and activist. Whether rolling on the streets of Havana, on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, or in an auditorium at Princeton debating philosopher Peter Singer, Harriet McBryde Johnson defies every preconception about people with disabilities, and shows how a life, be it long or short, is a treasure of infinite value.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - lavaturtle - LibraryThing

Harriet McBryde Johnson is amazing. But not in a sappy "inspirational" way. She has incredible tenacity in standing up to people in power, regardless of how unpopular it might be. This book is an excellent collection of stories from Johnson's incredible life.

TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG: Nearly True Tales from a Life

User Review  - Kirkus

Selected episodes from the life of "a tiny wheelchair woman with a certain amount of mouth," as disability rights activist Johnson describes herself.Johnson not only practices law in Charleston, S.C ...

Contents

• Preface: 1
• Too Late to Die Young: 7
• Hail to the Chief: 18
• Honk If You Hate Telethons: 47
• What the Hell Why Not?: 76
• Unconventional Acts: 109
• Trial and Error: 133
• Believing in Dreams: 152
• Getting Thrown: 173
• Unspeakable Conversations: 201
• Art Object: 229
• Good MorningAn Ending: 250
• Authors Note and Acknowledgments: 259

Popular passages

Page 14 - They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang ? Why set the pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum ? Alas, that they should wear our colors there...‎

Page 201 - He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child.‎

Page 205 - I draw out a comparison of myself and my nondisabled brother Mac (the next-born after me), each of us with a combination of gifts and flaws so peculiar that we can't be measured on the same scale" (Johnson 2003). Anne Finger, under the penname "Peter Stinker...‎

Page 227 - I don't think so. It's less about belief, less about hope, than about a practical need for definitions I can live with. If I define Singer's kind of disability prejudice as an ultimate evil, and him as a monster, then I must so define all who believe disabled lives are inherently worse off or that a life without a certain kind of consciousness lacks value. That definition would make monsters of many of the people with whom I move on the sidewalks, do business, break bread, swap stories and share...‎

Page 53 - When I sit back and think a little more rationally, I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway I may be a full human being in my heart and soul, yet I am still half a person I just have to learn to try to be good at being half a person.‎

Page 208 - worse off"? I don't think so. Not in any meaningful sense. There are too many variables. For those of us with congenital conditions, disability shapes all we are. Those disabled later in life adapt. We take constraints that no one would choose and build rich and satisfying lives within them. We enjoy pleasures other people enjoy, and pleasures peculiarly our own. We have something the world needs. Pressing me to admit a negative correlation between disability and happiness, Singer presents a situation:...‎

Page 227 - Of course not. And I know it's happened before, in what was considered the most progressive medical community in the world. But it won't happen. I have to believe that.‎

About the author

Harriet McBryde Johnson has been a lawyer in Charleston, South Carolina, since 1985. Her solo practice emphasizes benefits and civil rights claims for poor and working people with disabilities. For more than twenty-five years, she has been active in the struggle for social justice, especially disability rights. She holds the world endurance record (fourteen years without interruption) for protesting the Jerry Lewis telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. She served the City of Charleston Democratic Party for eleven years, first as secretary and then as chair. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and to the disability press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life
• Author: Harriet McBryde Johnson
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2006
• ISBN: 0312425716, 9780312425715
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / People with Disabilities; Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / Women; Health & Fitness / Diseases / Musculoskeletal; Social Science / People with Disabilities