Go the Way Your Blood Beats

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To them I was the boy on the telly who’d flown to America to get fixed, so they saw me as rejecting them as a disabled community because I’d tried to ‘fix’ myself. Debbie Gray, managing director of Genesius Pictures, said: “This beautiful, intensely powerful and heart-breaking memoir, ‘Go the Way Your Blood Beats’ is a story about being seen. At aged 12, Emmett was selected to undergo a revolutionary gait surgery in America and was the subject of national media attention. She really is what dream guests are made of; honest, willing to go to uncomfortable, sometimes difficult places, but always keen to make sure listeners have a great time and hopefully come away with something useful for their time spent with us. During our time together Kierra shared her life lessons learned from a difficult, unstable childhood, navigating the business world as an young, black female entrepreneur and how her business and business partner taught her how to trust.

The medical model of disability posits that the disabled individual needs to be fixed or somehow normalised by surgical intervention, and I had completely swallowed this idea,” Emmett explains.

The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. While Emmett eventually found his own chosen family, he still sees ableism everywhere in society – and says it’s rampant within the LGBTQ+ community too. Diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at 18 months old, Emmett was raised by loving and liberal parents and yet he grappled for a long time with accepting his own identity.

The author’s story runs more or less in parallel to my own, Emmett being just a few years younger than me. Wider creative team: Mary Forrest, Clare Wright, Gemma Sherlock, Helen Gamble-Shields, Kathleen Javalla, Caroline MacPake, Evangelia Vasiliadou.

I cried, I laughed and I ached my way through it, as a queer disabled person, the authors accounts of his life struck me deep and I couldn't put it down. At his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and at his college for disabled students, he’s told he will be expelled if the rumors are true, if he’s gay. Please familiarise yourself with our community guidelines to ensure that our community remains a safe and inclusive space for all. We have many mutual friends but this was our first proper chat and, as you'll hear, it's exactly that - a searingly honest get-to-you-know-you conversation that just so happened to be committed to audio.

At his sixth-form college for disabled students, he is told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, that he is gay. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking an authentic and heartfelt story that will stay with them long after they turn the final page. The publisher explained: “When Emmett de Monterey is 18 months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. But the miracle doesn’t occur, and he must reckon with a world that views disabled people as invisible, unworthy of desire.View image in fullscreen De Monterey, aged 12, in 1989, when he had his legs rebuilt in an American hospital. There is also a charming sense of intimacy in the way de Monterey describes place and characters - particularly his loving-rendered family. Growing up in south-east London in the 1980s, Emmett is shouted at on the street and prayed over at church.