A World without Martha

A World without Martha is an unflinching yet compassionate memoir of how one sister’s institutionalization for intellectual disability in the 1960s affected the other, sending them both on separate but parallel journeys shaped initially by society’s inability to accept difference and later by changing attitudes towards disability, identity, and inclusion.

Victoria Freeman is a writer, theatre artist, educator, and public historian. She is the co-creator, with L’Arche Toronto Sol Express, of Birds Make Me Think about Freedom, a play about the experiences of peoples institutionalized for intellectual disability, which won a Patron’s Pick award at the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival. She serves on the advisory board of Uncovering the People’s History, which documents the stories of institutional survivors and their families for Family Alliance Ontario. She also co-wrote the Talking Treaties Spectacle with Ange Loft of Jumblies Theatre, which was performed in 2017 and 2018 at Fort York in Toronto. Her previous book, Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America, was shortlisted for the 2000 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. She teaches in the Canadian Studies Program at Glendon College, and in the History Department at York University, in Toronto.

Patricia Douglas, assistant professor, Disability Studies, Faculty of Education, Brandon University:
This is a raw, honest, and candid account of how institutional and ideological ableism – institutionalization and the separation of siblings as well as stigmatization, shame, and marginalization – impacts individuals, families, and their relationships in tragic, shattering, and unpredictable ways.

David Wright, author of Downs: The History of a Disability:
Most memoirs written about people born with Down Syndrome have been authored by family members, often in a reassuring manner intended to destigmatize the condition for the general public. The tone of this book is strikingly different. It is full of regret, ambivalence, and conflict. There is no denying the honesty embedded in the author's raw, unvarnished reflections of her family's missed opportunities of acceptance and reconciliation.

Madeline Burghardt, author of Broken: Institutions, Families, and the Construction of Intellectual Disability:
Freeman’s candid account illuminates the complex and far-reaching effects of institutionalization in the family and brings insight to essential human concerns including love, abandonment, and acceptance. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of families’ experiences of separation and loss due to designations of “difference.”

Eliza Chandler, assistant professor, School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University:
Freeman’s compelling memoir weaves together many stories about the lasting impacts of institutionalization.With power and honesty, she reveals how disabled people were, and continue to be, treated in Canada, and the deep, lasting effects this has on family relations.

Mallory Davies, doctoral student, University of Waterloo:
...the memoir provides important context of familial relationships from the first-voice of a family member who was affected by provincial care rather than from the usual archival documentation... Freeman carefully explains the historical context of children with disabilities in the 1960s while shedding light on the long-term effects of families who sent their children into provincial care.

John Guido, long-time member of L’Arche Daybreak and L’Arche Toronto, and Outreach Coordinator for L’Arche Canada:
Beautifully written, deeply personal yet equally accessible, this memoir by Victoria Freeman takes us on a journey of discovery. It weaves together the pain, loss, and long road to healing of one family with the powerful social forces that led to the institutionalization of Martha Freeman and so many other children with disabilities, and, finally, the slow movement to return them to a valued place in society. A World without Martha is a painful, powerful, and ultimately hopeful story that will help the reader understand why we segregate some members of society, the terrible impact on them and their families, and what it means to be human.