On Being Stupid single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 On Being Stupid
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Awareness of this predicament dawns with a distant memory of being exhibited like a monkey in front of my peers. And the other kids being told I'd stay behind when they moved up a grade, probably til the end of time. It was lie a weird Japanese animation flick where someone puts a curse on the main character, and they're fucked for all time and forever. Years later I learnt the teacher has told my mum that I would never learn to read or write, that I was just dumb; it was as if I had never been anywhere or seen anything; it has the feel of Dostoyevsky's idiot about it.' (Introduction)

The author describes his experience with being called 'stupid' on account of his dyslexia ever since childhood, and the ways he pushed back against this definition.

Affiliation Notes

  • Writing Disability in Australia:

    This work has been affiliated because it focuses on the topic of dyslexia.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Island no. 148 2017 11579732 2017 periodical issue

    'I'm writing these words in the days after the ascension of a vainglorious braggart and swindler to the most powerful role on the planet, and evidently I'm not alone in feeling that the ground has given way beneath our feet. Those of us who came of age in the years after 1989 could be forgiven for feeling cheated. Hadn't the end of History come with the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Pax Americana the rock on which global peace and prosperity was to be founded? We grew up and accepted as eternal something that has turned out to be built on a fault line, and now the earthquake has come.' (Editorial Introduction)

    2017
    pg. 8-11
Last amended 4 May 2018 12:50:30
8-11 On Being Stupidsmall AustLit logo Island
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