The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir
George Estreich, 2013
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399163340
Summary
When Laura Estreich is born, her appearance presents a puzzle: does the shape of her eyes indicate Down syndrome, or the fact that she has a Japanese grandmother?
In this powerful memoir, George Estreich, a poet and stay-at-home dad, tells his daughter's story, reflecting on her inheritance—from the literal legacy of her genes, to the family history that precedes her, to the Victorian physician John Langdon Down's diagnostic error of "Mongolian idiocy." Against this backdrop, Laura takes her place in the Estreich family as a unique child, quirky and real, loved for everything ordinary and extraordinary about her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
George Estreich's collection of poems, Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, won the Gorsline Prize and was published in 2004. A woodworker, fly-fisherman, and guitar player, he has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at several universities. He lives in Cornvallis, Oregon, with his wife Theresa, a research scientist, and his two daughters, Ellie and Laura.. (From .)
Book Reviews
The moving, heartbreakingly lucid story about how a family learned to cope with, and ultimately appreciate, a daughter born with Down syndrome. Neither [ Estreich nor his wife] was prepared for the news that the baby girl they would name Laura had Trisomy 21, Down syndrome. Both were devastated; but for the author, the diagnosis had even more profound implications.... With the humility born of painful experience, Estreich concludes that "it is not the chromosome, but our response to it, that shapes the contour of a life." A poignantly eloquent meditation on the genetics of belonging.
Kirkus Reviews
The Shape of the Eye is a memoir of a father’s love for his daughter, his struggle to understand her disability, and his journey toward embracing her power and depth. Estreich is raw and honest and draws us each into a new view of what it means to be 'human’ and what it means to be ‘different.’ This book is beautifully written, poetically insightful, and personally transformative. To read it is to rethink everything and to be happy because of the journey.
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D. - Chairman & CEO of the Special Olympics
The Shape of the Eye personalizes Down syndrome, bringing a condition abstracted in the medical literature into the full dimensionality of one family's life. It's brave of George Estreich to make what has befallen his family so public, trusting of him to let an unknown audience second-guess the family's choices. Because he's opened his home and heart in this memoir, we are privileged to witness in chaotic, heart-wrenching, joyous detail what it means to have and to love a child with Down syndrome.
Marcia Childress - Associate Professor of Medical Education, University of Virginia School of Medicine
Discussion Questions
1. Is the book mainly about George, or Laura? How does George change, during the book? How does Laura?
2. What did you know about Down syndrome before reading the book? What did you learn?
3. The Shape of the Eye uses medical terminology, particularly in the first half of the book. Why do you think this is?
4. The Shape of the Eye opens in a doctor’s office, and has numerous encounters in hospitals and elsewhere. Some of these are successful, and some less so. In your personal experience, when is medicine most effective, and when it is not? What are the characteristics of good communication between patient, doctor, and caregiver?
5. Are people with Down syndrome visible in your community? How would you describe your community’s attitude towards people with disabilities in general? Have you seen significant change in those attitudes?
6. The author refers to Down syndrome as “Laura’s way of being human.” Do you see Down syndrome this way, or as a medical condition primarily, or as something else altogether?
(Questions from the author's website.)