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My Withered Legs and Other Essays
My Withered Legs and Other Essays is a collection of personal essays by Sandra Gail Lambert that reflects upon her experience becoming a writer alongside discussions of disability, queerness, and aging.
A seventy-year history of disability is threaded throughout these essays and intertwined with writing that celebrates lesbian love, explores the slapstick moments of life, and shares the obstacles and triumphs of becoming a writer later in life. The essays chronicle times of interruption and then adaptation as the disability skill of always just figuring it out becomes tested with age and with illness. Throughout the book, Lambert engages with topics of ageism and ableism through storytelling rich with wit and contemplation.
From childhood Lambert believed as a disabled person she was “ice floe material” rife for abandonment, and during the pandemic she ticks off the additional comorbidities—age, fatness, cancer, a heart attack—that groups her with the expendable. In the essay "Gimp Humor," she is threatened with a ticket for not coming to a full stop while strolling along in her wheelchair. Underpinning the humor is an analysis of whiteness and the wariness that can be lodged, or not, in a body.
Other essays reimagine the meaning of "Old Lady Dabbler," recount kayaking among a hundred alligators, and tell the romantic, laden-with-power-dynamics tale of two lesbians in their sixties who fall in love. Another essay explores the family story, truth embellished with fiction, of Lambert’s mother finding an unexploded bomb nestled in her parents' bed. This tale of the London Blitz delves into the increasingly common experience of "emergence" after a disaster and the necessity of becoming, especially for marginalized communities, our own first responders.
A seventy-year history of disability is threaded throughout these essays and intertwined with writing that celebrates lesbian love, explores the slapstick moments of life, and shares the obstacles and triumphs of becoming a writer later in life. The essays chronicle times of interruption and then adaptation as the disability skill of always just figuring it out becomes tested with age and with illness. Throughout the book, Lambert engages with topics of ageism and ableism through storytelling rich with wit and contemplation.
From childhood Lambert believed as a disabled person she was “ice floe material” rife for abandonment, and during the pandemic she ticks off the additional comorbidities—age, fatness, cancer, a heart attack—that groups her with the expendable. In the essay "Gimp Humor," she is threatened with a ticket for not coming to a full stop while strolling along in her wheelchair. Underpinning the humor is an analysis of whiteness and the wariness that can be lodged, or not, in a body.
Other essays reimagine the meaning of "Old Lady Dabbler," recount kayaking among a hundred alligators, and tell the romantic, laden-with-power-dynamics tale of two lesbians in their sixties who fall in love. Another essay explores the family story, truth embellished with fiction, of Lambert’s mother finding an unexploded bomb nestled in her parents' bed. This tale of the London Blitz delves into the increasingly common experience of "emergence" after a disaster and the necessity of becoming, especially for marginalized communities, our own first responders.
152 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2024
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91 people want to read
About the author
Sandra Gail Lambert
8 books35 followersSandra Gail Lambert writes about the intersections of disability, queerness, and aging. She's the author of the Lambda Literary Award winning My Withered Legs and Other Essays and the memoir A Certain Loneliness as well as two novels—The River's Memory and The Sacrifice Zone: An Environmental Thriller. Her work is widely anthologized and has been published by The New York Times, The Sun, Orion, Uncharted, and Narratively. Lambert lives in Florida close to her beloved rivers and swamps. .
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 23, 2024
Relatable and moving
I don’t know what it is like to read this book as a non-disabled person, but as a fellow woman in a wheelchair, though somewhat younger, I found myself inundated with moments of recognition as I read this. This book is both lyrical and honest. The author should be commended for saying things that are very hard to say out loud.
I don’t know what it is like to read this book as a non-disabled person, but as a fellow woman in a wheelchair, though somewhat younger, I found myself inundated with moments of recognition as I read this. This book is both lyrical and honest. The author should be commended for saying things that are very hard to say out loud.
March 18, 2024
Sandra Gail Lambert has struggled with polio and its after-effects all her life. She is queer, 70ish, and a cancer survivor. Should any of these things stop her from doing what she wants to do? Hell no. From figuring out how to climb aboard the school bus to kayaking past alligators in Florida to touring to promote her book in the midst of breast cancer treatment, she refuses to be stopped. These essays go deep into the pain and frustration as well as the joy. She takes us through the stupid ways people react to folks in wheelchairs, the horror of repeated infections after her breast cancer surgery, and the fear that she will fall and not be able to get up. She shares the frustrations of the publishing world and takes us through caring for her mother at the end of her life. If the tone is a little angry, it’s justified. These masterful essays hit hard and strong. Lambert previously published a memoir, A Certain Loneliness, and a novel, The River’s Memory.
February 9, 2024
I so enjoyed this collection of essays on love, nature, aging, creativity, activism, and more. With the added lens of queerness and disability, the author shares potent insights into the reality of caregiving between parent and child and even romantic partners. Her stoic kayaking trip down the Myakka River rang especially true and vivid. As a fellow Floridian, I’ve retreated in terror from those same alligator-infested waters. I also appreciated getting a window into the author’s writing life. She sticks the landing in her final whirlwind of an essay on health complications and the much anticipated release of her memoir, A Certain Loneliness. Thank you to The University of Georgia Press for the review copy. This was a pleasure to read.
November 26, 2024
This thought-provoking collection of essays covers a lot of territory. It gave me a much greater understanding of what it feels like to live with minimally functional legs, including all the nuts and bolts of transferring, distributing one’s weight, recovering from a fall, and, at the same time, managing well-meaning passersby.
The main thing that comes across is how a disability can serve to make a person fiercely independent and determined. Sandra Lambert, who contracted polio when she was small, writes about all the different ways she asserts herself in the face of social assumptions about weakness and passivity. She is actually strong and graceful, and she learns more and more about her body as she ages.
In these pages, she also goes through treatment for cancer, a process which reinforces some old traumas. And in between the hard work, she celebrates. She writes about kayaking, about falling in love, and about her quixotic relationship with her little dog. And she writes about developing a career as a writer, taking herself seriously even when others don’t, learning everything she can, and celebrating the wins.
The main thing that comes across is how a disability can serve to make a person fiercely independent and determined. Sandra Lambert, who contracted polio when she was small, writes about all the different ways she asserts herself in the face of social assumptions about weakness and passivity. She is actually strong and graceful, and she learns more and more about her body as she ages.
In these pages, she also goes through treatment for cancer, a process which reinforces some old traumas. And in between the hard work, she celebrates. She writes about kayaking, about falling in love, and about her quixotic relationship with her little dog. And she writes about developing a career as a writer, taking herself seriously even when others don’t, learning everything she can, and celebrating the wins.
March 18, 2024
Lambert's essays about her childhood polio, her struggles as a writer, the difficulty of caring for her elderly mother, and the problems of aging are well-crafted and moving. She is tough-minded about life's problems. People who sentimentalize or patronize those with disabilities drive her crazy.
Lambert grew up in the "John Wayne" era when people with polio had to be tough. As both a child and an adult she often faced exclusion. In the years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she has become bolder than ever.
Having her own disability didn't exempt Lambert from having to take care of a disabled (and rather disagreeable) mother who pretended she was the one doing the caretaking.
After years of overcoming challenges, Lambert, now in her seventies, worries how she and her loving wife will face the challenges of aging.
Her honesty is just as impressive as her writing.
Lambert grew up in the "John Wayne" era when people with polio had to be tough. As both a child and an adult she often faced exclusion. In the years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she has become bolder than ever.
Having her own disability didn't exempt Lambert from having to take care of a disabled (and rather disagreeable) mother who pretended she was the one doing the caretaking.
After years of overcoming challenges, Lambert, now in her seventies, worries how she and her loving wife will face the challenges of aging.
Her honesty is just as impressive as her writing.
May 31, 2024
Sandra’s writing is a disability studies window on clueless ableist editors, her grandfather’s bold moments during the 1940 London Blitz, a neighborhood cop situation that goes south in a minute over her wheelchair and many more vivid essays on her relationships, persevering in writing, and the funny, subtle human mannerisms of her “little dog”.
She's an older writer, lives in a southern red state, is gay, married and is so transformative. Another name for this book could be “A Certain Staying Power”.
September 28, 2025
Loved Lambert's collection of essays for so many reasons - they're well-written, honest, with a sense of humor and irony, and with anger as well for all the unnecessary obstacles thrown in the paths of people with disabilities. "What if it hadn't been so hard?" Lambert asks, and describes her childhood with polio before the ADA, her transition from crutches to a wheelchair, and her struggles with physical and attitudinal obstacles. She writes about the difficulties in describing herself both as a lesbian and disabled (deemed "too complex" by one writing teacher), and about how to introduce her disability ("withered legs" was actually suggested by one editor). She writes about dating, about taking care of her aging mother, and about writing later in life. These are the kind of stories I always want to read and revisit, stories of survival with small but important victories.
June 19, 2025
Beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, and utterly human.
January 22, 2026
I am such a fan of Sandra Gail Lambert. I'd follow her irreverent, wise voice anywhere.
March 4, 2024
A brilliant collection of essays centered on living in a specific body -- queer, disabled, old -- that illustrates the paradox of great literature: the specific "other" becoming the familiar "self."
Written with keen insight into pain and pleasure, these essays ripple on the skin and feed the imagination. A sensual, often humorous, always delightful read.
Written with keen insight into pain and pleasure, these essays ripple on the skin and feed the imagination. A sensual, often humorous, always delightful read.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews