Life As We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child

When Jamie Bérubé was born with Down syndrome in 1991, he was immediately subject to the medical procedures, insurance guidelines, policies, and representations that surround every child our society designates as disabled.  In this wrenching yet ultimately inspiring book, Jamie's father, literary scholar Michael Bérubé, describes not only the challenges of raising his son but the challenge of seeing him as a person rather than as a medical, genetic, or social problem.

Michael Bérubé is director of the program for research in the humanities at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.  He is the author of five books, including Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics, and has written for  The New Yorker,  The Village Voice, and many academic journals.  He lives in Champaign, Illinois, with his wife, Janet Lyon, and their two sons, Nick and James.