Finger, Anne 1951(?)-

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Finger, Anne 1951(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1951. Education: Harvard University, B.A. (cum laude), 1976; Stanford University, M.A., 1980.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Oakland, CA. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

San Francisco Independent Living Resource Center, San Francisco, CA, writer in residence, 1984-85; Woman's Building, Los Angeles, CA, writer in residence, 1987-89; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, lecturer, 1989-97. Visiting professor, University of Texas, Austin, 1996. Has also taught at community workshops; activist for disability rights; former assistant at an abortion clinic. Resident, Hedgebrook Farm, 1993, Centrum, 1995, and Yaddo, 1995.

MEMBER:

Society for Disability Studies (board member, 2001—; president, 2002—).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Joseph Henry Jackson Award, San Francisco Foundation, 1984; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, 1986; Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, 1987; Associated Writing Program Award for Short Fiction, 1987; Southern Review/Louisiana State University short fiction award for best first collection, 1988, for Basic Skills; Literature Fellowship, Brody Arts Fund, 1988; D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, 1991; Diversity Project grant, Wayne State University, 1994; Teaching and Mentoring Award, Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University, 1994; Arts Foundation of Michigan Literature Grant, 1994-95; summer faculty research fellowship, Wayne State University, 1995; Josephine Nevins Keal Faculty Fellowship, Wayne State University, 1995, 1997; summer faculty research fellowship, College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs at Wayne State University, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Basic Skills (short stories), University of Missouri Press (Columbia, SC), 1988.

Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth (autobiography), Seal Press (Seattle, WA), 1990.

Bone Truth (novel), Coffee House Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1994.

Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio (autobiography), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of Eulogy for a Virus, St. Martin's Press. Contributor of short stories and articles to Southern Review, Ploughshares, Discourse, Kenyon Review, Feminist Studies, Socialist Review, Antioch Review, Thirteenth Moon, and Third Coast.

SIDELIGHTS:

A polio survivor, Anne Finger is an activist for the disabled and author who has written about her disability in two autobiographical works. Finger's memoirs Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth and Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio touch on aspects of polio that are sometimes overlooked. In the former, she talks about her complications with pregnancy, and in the latter the author discusses the neurological and psychological affects of polio on patients. In Past Due, Finger recalls her weakened bones, which resulted in several breaks, and the traumatic birth of her son, Max, who had only a fifty percent chance of survival. The "uncompromising frankness" of the narrative makes for "painful but compulsive reading," according to Peggy Kaganoff in Publishers Weekly.

Elegy for a Disease covers a longer period in her life, from the time Finger contracted polio when she was three, through the many humiliating and painful treatments she received, her embarrassment at being discriminated against, and finally the depression and suicide attempts she made when she was older. Finger combines her personal experiences with a history of the disease, including some of the abusive nostrums that were inflicted on patients. Remarking that the author is "at her best when vividly delineating the Fifties and Sixties," Library Journal contributor James Swanton called the book an "unsentimental, grippingly told story." A Publishers Weekly writer similarly complimented the "skillful prose" in the book.

Finger draws on some aspects of her life, including pregnancy and her battle with polio, to create her character Elizabeth Etters in her debut novel, Bone Truth. The daughter of communist activists who later become alcoholics, Elizabeth has known a life of abuse complicated further by the pain of a body disabled by polio. Feeling unworthy compared to her parents' past accomplishments in politics and her mother's ability to raise four children while her husband was in prison, the heroine finds herself humiliated by her treatment as a polio patient. Photos of her naked, twisted body are used in medical studies, but she oddly turns this embarrassment around to become a famous photographer whose main subject is nude photos of the disabled. She struggles, furthermore, with trying to make a decision between aborting or keeping an unwanted baby. While Eleanor J. Bader, writing in Belles Lettres, called Bone Truth an "engrossing and real" novel containing passages that are "beautifully, if painfully, written."