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Book Cover for: Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It, Greg Marshall

Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It

Greg Marshall

Hardcover
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Finalist:Lambda Literary Award -Gay Memoir/Biography (2024)
**A 2024 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST**

* Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction of 2023 * NPR's Books We Love 2023 *
* A New and Noteworthy Memoir of 2023 Selected by * Washington Post * USA Today * Esquire * Buzzfeed * Debutiful * LitHub * and more! *

A hilarious and poignant memoir grappling with family, disability, and coming of age in two closets--as a gay man and as a man living with cerebral palsy

"Leg is intimate (and I mean that in all ways), insightful, and often laugh-out-loud funny." --Scott Simon, NPR's "Weekend Edition"
"A riotous new memoir . . . A hilarious yet loving account, this book has charm for days." --People Magazine

Greg Marshall's early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes (this is the '90s) and you'll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he's crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home-video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you'll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he's been living in another closet his whole life: he has cerebral palsy. Here, in the hot mess of it all, lies Greg Marshall's wellspring of wit and wisdom.

Extraordinarily funny and insightful, Leg is packed with outrageous stories of a singular childhood. It is also a unique examination of what it means to transform when there are parts of yourself you can't change, a moving portrait of a family in crisis, and a tale of resilience of spirit. In Marshall's deft hands, we see a story both personal and universal--of being young and wanting the world, even when the world doesn't feel like yours to want.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Abrams Press
  • Publish Date: Jun 13rd, 2023
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.35in - 5.75in - 1.02in - 0.74lb
  • EAN: 9781419763601
  • Categories: • LGBTQ+• Disability• Form - Essays

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About the Author

Marshall, Greg: -

Greg Marshall has helped more than four thousand clients reach their fitness goals through his unique personal training programs. His experience includes large chain gyms and private programs. He publishes the daily fitness blog www.fiture.co and is published in the fitness professionals magazine titled Club Industry. He is currently the director of personal training at the gym at City Creek in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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What people are saying

Mentioner image for: SwR
SwR
@SouthwestReview
1 year

We publish a literary quarterly in print and weekly content online.

“Be glad you’re not circumcised. That foreskin is a gift.” 📌ICYMI, @LucasESchaefer talked w/ @gregrmarshall about his new memoir, LEG: THE STORY OF A LIMB AND THE BOY WHO GREW FROM IT, out now via @AbramsPress https://t.co/YrEP2fo0Es

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: California Book Club
California Book Club
@CalBookClub
1 year

California Book Club is a book club devoted to literature from and about California.

At nearly 30 years old, Texas author Greg Marshall discovered he had lived with cerebral palsy for his whole life; "Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It," describes his life-changing discovery. https://t.co/0oGNhVoiUN

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: Michener Center for Writers
Michener Center for Writers
@MichenerCenter
1 year

The James A. Michener Center for Writers MFA program at the University of Texas at Austin. Applications for Fall 2024 open August 1st.

Hear MCW alum @gregrmarshall discuss his just-out memoir Leg on @NPR: https://t.co/KjnlJJpp3l

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Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"Leg is intimate (and I mean that in all ways), insightful, and often laugh-out-loud funny."--SCOTT SIMON, NPR's "Weekend Edition"
"It feels weird to say that Leg is hilarious, but it's true. The exploits of the Marshalls are those of a family that refuses to be buried by hardship and instead develops a great sense of humor . . . Leg never slows in its energy, hope and warmth."--WASHINGTON POST
"A riotous new memoir . . . A hilarious yet loving account, this book has charm for days."--People Magazine
"Leg is probably the most profound and funniest memoir you'll ever read . . . The book is an entertaining and enlightening chronicle of Marshall's life so far, including his discovery when he was almost 30 that he had cerebral palsy since birth, not 'tight tendons' like his parents told him . . . Marshall has pulled off the seemingly impossible. He's written a memoir that is poignant and hilarious."--Wisconsin Public Radio
"'[A] witty memoir . . . Marshall presents readers with an insightful story of identity and complex family dynamics."--USA Today, 10 Best Memoirs of 2023
"This highly awaited memoir isn't your typical coming-of-age story. Instead, it's a compassionate and humanizing gaze at what it's like to be a queer and disabled person, told in Marshall's original, addictive and acerbically witty voice. This story promises to be as funny as it is touching and insightful."
--Huffington Post Books
"In this heartfelt debut memoir, Greg Marshall tells his story of coming out twice: first, as a gay man; second, as a man with cerebral palsy--a diagnosis that his family kept from him since birth. Throughout the book, Marshall unflinchingly looks at queerness, disability, illness, and family through the lens of his own queer, disabled, ill family with great aplomb. This marvelous book will stick with me for a very long time."--ESQUIRE
"This hilarious and wholly unique memoir by Greg Marshall tackles many subjects: disability, family relationships, and coming out (twice). With signature wit and humor, Marshall takes material that could be morbid in the hands of a lesser writer, and dares his readers not to laugh. He knows he's had an unconventional life, but there's no self-pity here. Instead, he embraces the absurdity of it all and leans into it, making one hell of an entertaining book."
--Buzzfeed, Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2023
"Leg does what good non-fiction does best: it finds what's universal in the personal, the weird and the unique. Animated by the author's hilarious and, at times, gut-wrenching honesty, Leg is ultimately a story about resilience and how we care for ourselves and the people we love."

--Gay Times UK

"[A] riotously funny book that will steal your heart from the very first page. . . Rare is the book that makes me both laugh out loud and shed actual tears, but Leg made me do both. . . [Marshall's] writing brings to mind early David Sedaris, with its bitingly funny caricatures and descriptions, bathed in blistering commentary, deep-seated opinions, wit, intellect and, above all else, fierce family love."--Bookpage, Starred Review
"A sparkling portrait of personal discovery and a celebration of family, forgiveness, and thriving with a disability. In a zesty, forthright series of humorous, heartfelt, and often wincingly oddball anecdotes. . . [Marshall] displays a natural storytelling ability, and he writes with a good dose of self-effacing humor, exposing the murky consequences of secrets, even when they're kept with the best intentions."--Kirkus Reviews

"Marshall traces his experience coming out of two closets--first as gay, and much later, as having cerebral palsy--in this comedic memoir."

--Publishers Weekly
"In this big-hearted, (literally) laugh-out-loud memoir, Marshall explores how it touched every other aspect of his life, from dealing with grief, to dating as a gay man, to making sense of it all through writing."
--Bustle
"Smart and heartfelt ... His honesty and clarity in writing about disability makes this debut one to watch."--LitHub, Most Anticipated Books of 2023

"Marshall's book, in staying so firmly focused on his specific experience, offers a different kind of solidarity. Though I don't have cerebral palsy, I cringed, gasped, and smiled in recognition . . . Abandoning the obfuscation with which many of us learn to talk about disability is hard, even when the only people we're convincing with our vague wording are ourselves. But in Leg, Marshall makes a convincing argument that becoming more open is also a path out of shame. We need as many writers as possible who, like Marshall, are willing to say the silent part out loud."

--The Brooklyn Rail
"Leg is a laugh-out-loud funny memoir that will hit you squarely in the heart and leave you with tears in your eyes. Tears of joy and tears of heartache, sure--but most of all tears of gratitude for this incredible tale of marvelous resilience, tremendous love, a larger-than-life family, and boner pills. Greg Marshall is one helluva storyteller, taking hilarity and emotional resonance and putting them in a paint mixer set to high until he creates an astonishingly bright, bold, and beautiful new color that is uniquely his own." --ISAAC FITZGERALD, New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts
"Honestly, I don't know how to describe Greg Marshall's Leg--a strange, smutty, hilarious, beautiful, compassionate, provoking, big-hearted, sharp-tongued, original, brilliant memoir. It's about a very particular coming-of-age that will nevertheless remind readers of what it is to be young and to want everything. Marshall's Leg is sui generis. I hated to see it end."--ELIZABETH McCRACKEN, National Book Award finalist and author of The Hero of This Book
"Greg Marshall's Leg has all the ingredients of an addictive memoir. But what separates this book from the pack is Marshall's rich and rare perspective navigating the world as a queer disabled person. Marshall delves into his unique life experiences to illustrate the all-too-relatable struggle to be your authentic self and he does it with unflinching honesty. He's one of the most exciting new voices in non-fiction. I could get lost in his brilliant brain forever."--RYAN O'CONNELL, author of Just by Looking at Him
"In the struggles of his body, his family, and his own exploration of his identities, Marshall finds a mirror and a prism for life in America now. This is a funny, smart, and loving memoir, and I learned perhaps more about myself reading Leg than I did about Marshall."--ALEXANDER CHEE, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"Greg Marshall's Leg is a generous gift to readers. Yes, it is a raw, brutally honest, and compassionate chronicle of discovery (both of the self and the surrounding world) but it is also one of the funniest books I've ever read."--CHLOÉ COOPER JONES, author of Easy Beauty, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
"Greg Marshall's Leg is the rare witty, tender, ebullient, wry, and raunchy memoir. Marshall is a natural storyteller, both disarmingly vulnerable and wickedly funny, and Leg is a beautiful, necessary book."--LAUREN HOUGH, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing
"No one manages to make the specific as universal as Greg Marshall. Sharply observed with prose that explodes into your stomach, Leg captures a life of victories and struggles that never once tip into victimhood while showcasing a spirit like no other."--BEN PHILIPPE, Author of Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend
"Bracingly candid . . . With [his cerebral palsy] diagnosis came understanding, and a lifetime of resilience enabled [Marshall] to find the silver linings that allow him to live life on his own terms."--Washington Post, 10 Noteworthy books for June

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