Writing For One’s Self and Others: The Beauty and Frustrations of Adelle Purdham’s I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself
A Review by Zachary Thompson
February 10, 2025
I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself. Adelle Purdham. Dundurn Press. $26.99, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781459754539
While it may seem that memoir and creative nonfiction have never been more popular in North America, recent studies suggest otherwise. In early 2024, Allison K. Williams and Jane Friedman reported in The Brevity Blog that, according to the Publishers Marketplace, book deals for memoirs have declined rapidly in recent years: from 322 reported deals in 2021, to 311 in 2022, to 279 in 2023. Tajja Isen followed up on this study in The Walrus, noting that “within the publishing industry, it’s become a truism that memoir is difficult to sell,” and that “readers seem to reach for these books less—which is presumably why fewer of them are being acquired for publication.” This leads Isen to the existential question of “why are we so bored by one another’s lives?”
This recent doomsaying of the popularity of memoir, backed up by acquisition numbers and sales figures, will probably surprise many casual observers. Indeed, it was only ten years ago that Kara Brown wrote a polemic in Jezebel urging writers to delete their memoirs: “Throw away your entire laptop if you must, but just get rid of it.” Back in 2012, Colin McEnroe of Connecticut Public Radio lamented that his “inbox is full of pitches for memoirs,” and made reference to “the art (and glut) of memoir,” harkening back to a phrase first popularized by Ben Yagoda in the 2009 Daily Beast article, ‘Celebrity Memoir Glut.’ The Glut of Memoir has now become a standard phrase in some literary circles, as much a truism as Isen’s counter-truism, that memoir is difficult to sell. If the popularity of memoir has dwindled in recent years, it is perhaps in reaction to the glut that came before the recession.
So, which is it? Are we bored of other people, or are we still eager to read about their experiences?
Upon reading Adelle Purdham’s new essay collection, I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, I think the answer might be: we’re both.
Purdham’s collection is often heartrending, but takes sudden turns towards being frustrating and inscrutable. Addressing a much more scattered assortment of subject matter than the title suggests, the essays largely deal with Purdham’s experience of being a mother, specifically to her middle daughter Elyse, who has Down syndrome. The pieces centred on Elyse, and Purdham’s adjusting to parenting a child with a disability, are gripping. Purdham doesn’t shy away from emotions that may make readers uncomfortable, tackling unapologetically the frustrations, fears and disillusionments that she encounters in caring for Elyse. “I cry because I never wanted a baby with Down syndrome,” she laments in the opening piece. “I cry over this new identity foisted on me as a mother.” The passage culminates with a chilling phrase, italicized by Purdham for emphasis: “What will people think?”
Shortly thereafter, Purdham details the day of Elyse’s birth, noting that she and her husband “enter the hospital, Tim Hortons cups in hands, feeling quite relaxed.” It’s an almost nihilistic image coming so soon after her distress at having her child’s disability “foisted upon” her; Purdham’s calm, the nonchalance of her coffee cup, evoke a resignation, as if Purdham has withdrawn into herself, too exhausted and overwhelmed to fret over either her own wellbeing or that of her unborn child. She remarks that she and her husband watched Elyse’s birth together in a state of detachment, “like this isn’t real life.”
Of course, the existence of this essay collection already portends that Purdham will get her bearings, that her relationship to her second child will radically improve; and so it does. Purdham crafts some absolutely gorgeous passages expounding on her love for and dedication to Elyse: “As neurotypical children, [Purdham’s other two daughters] bask in summer light all season long, as every child should, while, societally, Elyse shivers in winter’s eternal darkness. With her, I must live all summer in a day.” There is a hard-won wisdom in moments like this, with Purdham forgoing any romanticized illusions about Elyse’s experience being no different from her other two daughters. Elyse having Down syndrome presents different challenges, and Purdham doesn’t shy away from lamenting that these challenges are inevitably a struggle. Toward the end of the book, she offers up another simple but gritty epiphany: “I have not backed down from pushing Elyse into her fears, and neither has she backed down from her protests, and often we meet in the middle.”
Unfortunately, Purdham is rarely able to mine her own experience, apart from that shared with Elyse, with nearly as much success. Frequently, the compelling narrative of Purdham’s development as a parent and as a disability activist is set aside to pivot to marital tumult between Purdham and her husband, Dan.
The chapter entitled ‘Aporia,’ describing a long period of unhappiness between Purdham and Dan regarding whose career will need to be put on hold so that one or the other can devote themselves to full-time parenting, is often too devoid of context or insight to feel like anything more than an account of two parents battering one another with ultimatums and refusals to compromise. Purdham openly states that after having children, she “couldn’t imagine going back to elementary school teaching,” given her newfound desire to become a professional writer, a desire she describes as wanting to “light a fire.” But, when quitting teaching to focus full-time on writing and parenting, she laments being designated an imposter (as a writer) and a freeloader (as a wife), despite the fact that “I was the one who earned money first, while Dan finished his Ph.D., and I was the one who made the down payment on our home.”
Considering a large portion of I Don’t Do Disability’s narratives take place not at Purdham’s home, but at a lakeside cottage Purdham and her husband purchased in order to afford themselves peace and quiet to work on their respective careers during the COVID-19 lockdown, I think it will be difficult for most readers—in the midst of a decades-long and rapidly worsening economic and housing crisis—to empathize with the feelings of imposter syndrome intruding into the life of an MFA graduate who owns multiple properties, and who has knowingly embarked on the notoriously unstable ‘career’ of professional writing. What’s more, and regardless of any tone-deafness pertaining to privilege and class, Purdham eventually concedes that the frequent arguments between her and Dan are mostly an exercise in futility: “And even if Dan does give me exactly what I want, time and space — which is what he will eventually do — then I have to contend with the very real possibility that I could fail, as a writer.” It’s a feeling of uncertainty all writers—professional, aspiring, or otherwise—have experienced, but I would also suspect most are too burdened with the stresses of their day job to feel this much indignation at not being able to make a stable career in the arts in 2025.
Much more unpleasant is the chapter ‘Extramarital Sex,’ wherein Purdham interrupts bedtime cuddling with her husband to ask if he would care if she had sex with another man (she even has the man in mind, American poet Ross Gay). Purdham’s husband is taken aback at the suggestion, and Purdham insists that his refusal of permission is unfair. Bizarrely, when Dan poses the question back to Purdham with the roles reversed, she responds “obviously no,” but only because Dan “doesn’t want to have sex with anybody else” (italics Purdham’s). The chapter doesn’t betray any interest in the social mechanics of polyamory or the obvious ethical double standards imposed on women as opposed to men, especially as pertains to the domestic sphere and sexual politics. Indeed, Purdham even continually insists that Dan “wouldn’t have to know” if she slept with another man—an assertion almost certain to destabilize any trust between seemingly-monogamous partners. The essay is a gigantic misstep, and as already observed by Anne Thériault in her incisive review for Quill & Quire, the piece “doesn’t lead anywhere” and does “more to derail than add to the narrative.”
Thankfully, even when the content turns sour, I Don’t Do Disability is held afloat by Purdham’s exacting prose, which is radiant throughout. One of Purdham’s greatest strengths is her keen eye for detail and a lovely turn of phrase, a style which imbues these pieces with a quiet intimacy akin to mid-20th century American storywriters like John Cheever and Ann Beattie. We are treated to sumptuous images of Purdham’s home: her bed “with its deluxe pillow top…plush and high,” which she acquired “thanks to [her] dad’s career as a mattress salesman.” Soon after she is leaning into her “faux brown-leather couch” looking out her home’s “large bay window at the trees thrashing in the wind.”
An especially striking image comes during a childhood flashback: Purdham’s great aunt “doles out balls of a strange orange fruit,” spreading “sweetness…across [her] tongue,” a sensation which turns out to be her “first taste of cantaloupe.” It’s a beautiful visual in its own right, tactile and sensuous, and recalls the oft-cited ‘Gurov’s Watermelon' passage from Chekhov’s “The Lady With the Little Dog,” an old standby of literary realism and a writer’s workshop favourite; truly, ‘Chekhovian realism’ does not get more Chekhovian than a stirring description of a slice of melon.
The sureness of Purdham’s language answers the question posed earlier: no, we are not in fact bored with other people, at least not when their experience is rendered with such care. Purdham has captured her complicated relationship to motherhood, and specifically to her daughter Elyse, with captivating clarity; while it is a shame that the book’s other subjects are not rendered nearly as effectively, the strength of her prose throughout confirms she will be a writer to watch going forward, whether pursuing the art of memoir or the art of fiction.
Zachary Thompson (he/him) is a freelance writer living in Hamilton, Ontario. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from York University, and a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. He has presented his work at the Lit Live Reading Series in Hamilton, as well as at the 2021 Conference of the Comics Studies Society. Some of his most recent work appears in the Literary Review of Canada’s Bookworm supplement on Substack.