Brimmer, Gabriela. Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Three Voices. By Gaby Brimmer and Elena Poniatowska. Trans. Trudy Balch. Foreword Judith E. Heumann and Jorge Pineda. Introd. English-language edition by Lauri Umansky. Afterword Avital Bloch. Waltham: Brandeis UP; UP of New England, 2009. 200 pp. ISBN 9781-5846-5758-3.200 This as-told-to autobiography presents an amazing story. Although Elena Poniatowska developed the text from a combination of interviews with Gaby Brimmer's mother (Sari Dlugacz) and caregiver (Florencia Morales), the primary voice is that of Mexico-born disability rights activist and writer Gaby Brimmer (1947-2000). Gaby was born as the second of two surviving children in Mexico City to Miguel Brimmer and Sari Dlugasz, Viennese-Jewish refugees. Shortly after birth, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Her mother's voice recalls her horror at seeing for the first time, in her new-born child, the characteristic spasms that arched and shook her body. Gaby, by contrast, is philosophic about the now-routine tests that might have prevented the condition, which was caused by the rH incompatibility of her parents' blood, and produced her profound physical disability.
