As an adult I’m humbled by my differences but mostly I suffer from seeing way beyond my potential. Fortunately, I loved storytelling and writing from a very young age so I gravitated back toward academics. My biggest problem was that I neglected my own intellectual development. Then in high school I was dating and going to parties. So I grew up playing sports and taking ballet lessons in artificial legs. Since I saw myself as equal or the same as anyone else, most people saw me that way too.

Life has many layers of truth to it, and I find that it never pays to focus on one layer. I think it was a combination of both acceptance and distraction. What influenced you to go forward?Įileen: I didn’t see myself as different and that may have been because my family accepted me or because they were too pre-occupied to indulge me, given that there were eleven children. And your mother had serious mental problems. Your fingers on your left hand were webbed until a plastic surgeon reshaped them. You were born without legs – one ended at the knee and one above it. LitVote: You faced considerable obstacles growing up. The publicists submit galleys to numerous venues in anticipation of publication. LitVote: Did you submit your book, Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience, to The Oprah Magazine to be considered for, “10 Titles to Pick Up Now,” or did the magazine find you?Įileen: My publicist at Norton submitted the book. She practice clinical psychology in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She published in the Washington Post and other venues.

Reviewers loved this damaged but hilarious family, and it’s a classic Irish Catholic story from the 60s.īefore Mermaid, she won the Washington Writing Prize in short fiction, and had a notable essay in Best American Essays. Mermaid is about growing up in the Midwest as a middle child among eleven, with a mother who fought mental illness, while Eileen battled serious birth defects. In January, 2014, WW Norton released Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience, and in February of 2014, it was in The Oprah Magazine’s “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.” It was also included on Page One in Poets & Writers. Eileen Cronin’s memoir, Mermaid, selected for The Oprah Magazineīy Mary Yuhas Interview with a woman born without legs about forging your own way

Mermaid a memoir of resilience