Gabriela "Gaby" Raquel Brimmer (September 12, 1947 – January 2, 2000), was a Mexican writer and activist for people with disabilities. She was born in Mexico City, the daughter of Sari and Michel Brimmer, Austrian Jewish immigrants. She had a brother, David. Gaby was born with
cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sensa ...
and since childhood learned to act in a world that has difficulty accepting diversity. Brimmer's caretaker
Florencia Sánchez Morales was largely responsible for teaching her to communicate. Brimmer's life was chronicled in the film ''
Gaby: A True Story''. In 1979, her Spanish-language autobiography ''Gaby Brimmer,'' coauthored by
Elena Poniatowska
Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor (born May 19, 1932), known professionally as Elena Poniatowska () is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on th ...
, was published by Editorial Grijalbo in Mexico City. An English version translated by Trudy Balch appeared in 2009.
Education and early life
In 1955, she was enrolled into a rehabilitation center's elementary school where a teacher recognized her talent with words and recommended that she become a writer. In 1967, Brimmer entered a regular school. Her
Language Arts
Language arts (also known as English language arts or ELA) is the study and improvement of the arts of language. Traditionally, the primary divisions in language arts are literature and language, where language in this case refers to both lingu ...
teacher was a poet who also persuaded her to write. That very same year she started to write poems. The first time her mother read one of her poems she was deeply moved, cried and asked her to keep them all so that a book could be published. Brimmer could only type on the typewriter with a toe from her left foot, the only part of her body she could control. In 1971, she was accepted into the Social and Political Sciences department at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico
The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...
as a Sociology major, but did not graduate.
Gabriela Brimmer Foundation
Gaby founded an organization of people with disabilities, known as Asociación para los Derechos de Personas con Alteraciones Motoras (
Adepam) (in English, Association for the Rights of People with Motor Disabilities) and was an active participant in numerous other organizations.
REVIEW OF ''Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Three Voices'' by Zsolt Kelemen
/ref> Brimmer worked for the full participation of people with disabilities and at the same time managed to write poetry. Brimmer was regarded as one who enjoyed a moving sensitivity and a strength that stemmed from the depths of her soul. Observers of her life commented that she did not think of herself as an "outstanding personality," even when people could not hide their astonishment in seeing her do the things she did. She used to say, "life makes me to do it. Her message to people with disabilities was to rethink their ways of living by forgetting the limits imposed by others.
See also
New York Times, October 30, 1987.
Gaby: Una historia verdadera, es una película que narra la biografía de la poetisa y escritora mexicana de origen judío Gaby Brimmer. Es una coproducción estadounidense-mexicana.
La actriz argentina Norma Aleandro, en el papel de Florencia, la mujer que ayudó a Gabriela en su evolución, fue nominada a los Premios Oscar como mejor actriz de reparto.
Waltham, MA, Brandeis UP, 2009.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brimmer, Gabriela
Mexican disability rights activists
Mexican women poets
Writers from Mexico City
1947 births
2000 deaths
People with cerebral palsy
Mexican Jews
Mexican people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Jewish poets
20th-century Mexican women writers
20th-century Mexican poets
National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni
Writers with disabilities