Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

How I Became a Human Being

By: Mark O'Brien, Gillian Kendall - preface
Narrated by: David A. Gilmore
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

In September 1955, six-year-old Mark O’Brien moved his arms and legs for the last time. He came out of a coma to find himself enclosed from the neck down in an iron lung, the machine in which he would live for much of the rest of his life.

For the first time in audio, How I Became a Human Being is O’Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O’Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O’Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

©2003 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System (P)2014 Audible Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot cover art
Golden State cover art
Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass cover art
Broken Glass: A Family's Journey Through Mental Illness cover art
How to Cook Your Daughter cover art
Fractured Not Broken cover art
The Olive Picker cover art
A Body, Undone cover art
Agorafabulous! cover art
Because I Come from a Crazy Family cover art
The Cooked Seed cover art
Suddenly cover art
Heft cover art
Beautiful Boy cover art
The Physician cover art
The Corrections cover art

What listeners say about How I Became a Human Being

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.