(p50), and also later, of his thoughts of suicide. ‘I was now ten, a boy who couldn’t walk, talk, feed or dress himself…’. He also, so honestly, tells of the emotional pain of feeling trapped in his body, of the growing awareness of how is life was so different, and restricted, compared to other young people around him. He carefully weaves in some heart-warming tales of ‘little outings’ with his older sisters and brothers, exploring the local area (in a home-build go-cart), including going to the cinema and even swimming. Yet with much persistence and determination, as well as unwavering support from his mother, he begins to communicate via foot-writing at around age five, using chalk between his toes to spell out words.Īs he grows and matures, Brown also begins to explore his local community, thus opening his world, just a little. These muscle and speech difficulties continues into infancy Brown at five years old describes himself as a ‘little bundle of crooked muscles and twisted nerves’. At around four months, his mother notices something wrong with Brown’s muscle tone, unable to hold his head up and communicate as her other children had.

Brown was born in 1932, a ‘difficult birth’ requiring extra care and recuperation. He learns to write with his left foot, then going on to write more sophisticated sentences and phrases, leading, finally, to his career as a poet and novelist. Yet Brown manages something truly amazing.

Perhaps even more so, given that Brown was born with cerebral palsy and given little hope of life outside an institution. Perhaps an unlikely candidate to write a successful autobiography in his early 20s. My Left Foot is the tale of Christy Brown: born in 1930s Dublin, one of 17 children, living in cramped conditions and not much to go around.

Christy brown autobiography