Adelle Purdham’s new essay collection, I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself was just released with Durdurn Press and is a powerful and necessary examination of Adelle’s internalized ableism, which is brought to painful light when she find’s out she will be having a baby with Down syndrome. By interogating herself, she encourages us to examine our own prejudices and move beyond them. This book explores the unexamined stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Adelle Purdham is an educator, parent disability advocate, and the author of I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself (Dundurn Press, 2024). Within the past few years, her essays have been finalists in several literary contests: the 2023 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir, The Writer’s Union of Canada’s short prose competition, EVENT’s 2022 non-fiction contest, The Fiddlehead’s 2022 CNF contest, and the 2022 and 2023 CNFC/HLR Creative Nonfiction Prize. Adelle holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from The University of King’s College and she’s a qualified French teacher. She’s also a graduate of Humber College’s Creative Writing by Correspondence program. Her work appears in literary journals, such as Prairie Fire and The Humber Literary Review, and in literary anthologies, including Good Mom on Paper (Book*hug Press), which was named a CBC book to watch for and Globe and Mail Best Reads. She’s a regular contributor to 3.21: Canada’s Down Syndrome Magazine. She’s the founder of The Write Retreat, and facilitates workshops for women writers to create. She lives and writes in her hometown, Peterborough, Ontario, originally known as Nogojiwanong—Ojibwa for “place at the end of the rapids”. Adelle is a sessional Course Instructor at Trent University-Durham, where she teaches creative writing.
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian author living on Anishinaabe land in Ontario. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health (Guernica Editions, 2021) won a Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box (Radiant Press), was released in 2023 and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill), is forthcoming in fall 2024. She is the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com
HG: When you wrote what would become the first essay for this collection, did you know at the time you were creating a book, or were you only attempting to explore one theme/idea?
AP: I knew I was creating a book from the onset, but I sort of tricked myself into writing the first two essays in my collection. I was enrolled at King’s in the MFA program, and I had 5,000 words to write for my mentor Jane Silcott that coming September. It was July, and I knew I would get to writing my book eventually, but in the meantime, my husband Dan and I were celebrating our 11-year anniversary (we’ve now been married over 15 years) and as a gift, I decided I would write the story of us. I had recently attended a reading, and one of the readers referenced Wendell Berry’s poem “The Country of Marriage,” which immediately struck me as a place I understood and a concept I wanted to explore. I looked up the poem, and decided I would use Berry’s words as a framework to structure my own essay and the story of Dan and I. “Eleven Years a Country” became the second essay in my collection.
Once I’d written that piece, it was clear that “Eleven Years A Country” provided essential background information that was necessary to the story I wanted to tell relating to the birth of our daughter with Down syndrome. Once I had written the story of Dan and I, I soon after wrote what would become the first essay in my collection, “Three, Two, One.” My family is at the core of who I am, and at the heart of this collection, and so when it came to introducing my daughters, it made sense to begin with their birth stories, where I first met them. In “Three Two One,” I establish two important points central to the rest of I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself: we live in an ableist society, and giving birth to a child with Down syndrome was perceived as a negative. I wanted readers to immediately see and feel my sense of injustice at how the births of each of my three daughters were treated differently. From the time I carried her in utero, before she had a chance to announce herself, I received the societal message that Elyse’s life was perceived as “less than.” This essay sets the stage for me to be able to explore my own ableism and other lies I’ve told myself in the rest of the book.
HG: Tell us about the process of finding a publisher for this book. As I remember, you have a pretty fun and inspiring acceptance story!
AP: Anyone who’s every submitted a manuscript to publishers, without an agent or any existing connections, knows the agony of the unknown involved in that process! Until you find a publisher, you can’t know with certainty that you ever will. I put in the work, and I held onto the belief that with tenacious faith the right person would one day read my manuscript and want to publish it.
I completed a manuscript, a more traditional memoir, that I had shopped around about five years prior. That book made it to several editorial boards, but ultimately didn’t find a home. I spent the two years of my MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing at the University of King’s College writing initial drafts for I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, and then I took an additional full year to finish writing the book following the completion of the program. I submitted the essays to literary contests along the way, and had enjoyed a certain level of success, and so knew my work was resonating with a well-read public. I believed in what I was doing, what I had to say and why, but I knew it would take the right individual to pick up my manuscript and not pre-judge the work or turn up their nose based on the words “Down syndrome”, “Disability” or “Motherhood”. I have no interest in using my daughter as a prop to make myself look good; she isn’t here to teach me anything; and this isn’t inspiration porn— I Don’t Do Disability is real life.
And as real life would have it, I planned a trip to Greece in late August of 2023 with my oldest daughter and the week leading up to our departure, I submitted I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself to over a dozen publishers with fingers crossed.
Nearing the end of our vacation, I was reclined in a beach chair overlooking the Aegean Sea, bikini clad, glasses on to block the low intensity sun. Gentle waves lapped the shore, the smells of sweet cigar wafted past. I read a book our Airbnb hosts lent me and I shielded my eyes from the day’s eruption.
I had no idea what I would be doing that September—my future looked like a blank slate. On this second to last day of our trip, I laid the book open on my lap and reached for my phone to check for messages from my daughter who’d stayed back to relax in our Airbnb. I absent-mindedly opened my email, and there at the top was a message from editor Megan Beadle, then at Dundurn. I gasped, shot upright in my chair and took in the words I waited over ten years to read. “Dear Adelle, I was exceptionally moved by your essay collection…” My hand flew to my mouth and the tears were immediate. I remember looking around at my fellow beach goers like, can you even believe this? But nobody cared. The email wasn’t quite a book deal yet, but in that beach chair, in that moment, it was as Lauren Groff writes in Fates and Furies, I’d been “made new.” I sensed the series of events to come this email had set in motion—I would never be an unpublished writer again. I slid an arm into the sequined coat of “author” and marvelled at how the garment fit. In that final dizzying array of Greek light, I was ready to let my story shine.
HG: Publishing memoir can feel harrowing: it’s all excitement until the reality of imminent publication hits and you realize you are actually letting complete strangers inside your personal life. Is there any part of the book you are especially nervous for people to read?
AP: At the moment of answering this question, I am less than three weeks away from launching I Don’t Do Disability, or “wide-spread distribution” as my publisher would say. I do, at times, feel a complete paralysis of dread at the notion that people are going to read the book, in all its intimacy, but then I remind myself others have already read my work. Beta readers. Writing friends. Contest readers. Dan, my husband and first reader. The smart publishing folks at Dundurn. Other professional writers, authors, who read for endorsements, and I breathe a heavy exhale and sigh relief. Is there something in particular therein that I’m most sensitive to other readers reacting to? Perception of my relationship with my daughter with Down syndrome; my sex life and sexual desire; my rage and the times I’ve lashed out, all of which I write about. I’m afraid of being misunderstood, of having words put in my mouth or words distorted in ways I never intended or didn’t mean. But here’s the thing: some of my fears have already played out. Readers don’t owe you anything and once you put words out into the world, you cease to control the dialogue. How your work gets interpreted often has much more to do with the reader and their own sensibilities than the words on the page. Despite my good girl upbringing, I’m ready to accept that I cannot and will not please everyone. My love for my daughter outweighs these fears ten-fold. I won’t be able to please every reader and so what I’ve tried to do is be as honest as I can with myself.
HG: This is your debut book. Tell us about an aspect of publishing–and if possible, publishing nonfiction specifically–that surprised you.
AP: The honest answer is that I am shocked at what Canadian authors are being paid for book contracts and the financial situation the publishing industry faces. I appreciate our robust granting systems even more now, but I am also keenly aware how precarious the life of a writer can be without some external, additional, financial backing.
I also want to share a practical aspect of publishing CNF that surprised me that I hope will help other aspiring soon-to-be published writers. Keep track of your references as you go! Keep a clean version of your essays for contests, and a marked-up version with references already in Chicago Manual of Style formatting. Even if your publisher uses a different style guide, you’ll be far ahead. This practice of proper referencing will save you and your publisher loads of time. I wish I had done a better job of keeping track of my references in the first place, as this gaffe cost me days of additional labour later.
HG: Your book is not really about your daughter having Down syndrome, but about your own internalized ableism and the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. Presumably, you had revelations attitudes before you sat down to write this book, but I wonder if, in the writing process, there were any new and surprising moments of self-discovery.
AP: I wrote this book as a method of self-discovery; and I think that’s what the essay form does best: the essayist follows the mazy mind and the writing becomes a process of inquiry and exploration and a sort of reckoning with shadowy corners. If I wasn’t going to learn anything new about myself along the way, then I wouldn’t have written the book; I wouldn’t be a writer writing. I guess in that way I’m seeking answers for myself as much as I’m telling stories.