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A Place for Noah
Beginning where A Child Called Noah left off, A Place for Noah - Josh Greenfeld's journal entries from 1971 to 1976 - conveys the anger, frustration, day-to-day drudgery, and intense love the Greenfeld family experiences during six years (ages five to eleven) in the life of Noah, the Greenfelds' severely brain-damaged son.Initial hope and denial have given way to simmering rage. As Noah grows older, the Greenfelds realize that eventually they will have to relinquish his care to others, but the horrors of bureaucratic mistreatment and the lack of any true understanding on the part of many the professionals they encounter leave them increasingly unwilling to have him institutionalized. They finally discover that, by default, they have become experts.The Greenfelds move to Pacific Palisades, California, to be near a school where Noah will receive the best treatment available, but they continue to search for a future solution - striving all the while to keep a place in their home and their hearts for their son.
310 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 8, 2024
I like to read biographies, memoirs and diaries of “normal,” non-famous people. If you’d like to explore this literature, GoodReads offers an excellent introductory list, https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8...
Josh Greenfeld was a partially-famous author, but this book is not about his writing career. Instead he writes about his discouraging relationship with his mentally-damaged son Noah. Josh shares the heroic, hopeful campaign to lift Noah into minimal autonomy; ability to speak and take himself to the toilet. He and his wife Fumiko Kometani tried every therapy imaginable to bring this about. Fumiko even opened her own school, to make sure no opportunity was lost.
Spoiler Alert: In the end, none of it worked. Whatever progress Noah appeared to make was minimal and temporary. I could never criticize these parents; they gave their son all they had. Having known both autistic people and the people who cared for them, I can only say the burden of that care is unimaginable to the parents of normal children.
I liked following Josh’s daily thoughts. He was a skillful writer and it’s interesting to watch how he applied his skills in this medium. Diaries often serve as emotional safety valves, and Josh does not hold any steam back.
I still both enjoy Noah, and ignore him. Which is, after all, the way most of us fundamentally treat one another.
Only a few times does Josh comment on the larger world, outside his family.
September 12, 1971
Everyone seems to make the same mistake about President Nixon that I used to make as a draftee about my career Army sergeants. We assume there must be a cleverness behind a deviousness that is so obvious. And there never is.
Soon, however, the writer’s attention returns to his disabled son. The news from NoahTown is rarely positive and always sad.
June 4, 1972
Noah has not progressed dramatically this year. Next year, by this time, I will have placed him in an institution. [this did not happen that year] He is a very severely retarded child. Forget the autism and the schizophrenia, he's a damned retard, and I have to get rid of him.
February 1, 1973
I've finally read Pearl Buck's book about her own retarded daughter, A Child Who Never Grew, and was close to tears.
March 16, 1973
When we returned from Santa Barbara last night, Noah looked at us with such genuine love. It will be just as hard to part with him as it is to live with him.
March 17, 1974
I began in confusion and I will end in confusion and the only thing I will have gained is the secure knowledge that there is nothing in between.
Josh Greenfeld was a partially-famous author, but this book is not about his writing career. Instead he writes about his discouraging relationship with his mentally-damaged son Noah. Josh shares the heroic, hopeful campaign to lift Noah into minimal autonomy; ability to speak and take himself to the toilet. He and his wife Fumiko Kometani tried every therapy imaginable to bring this about. Fumiko even opened her own school, to make sure no opportunity was lost.
Spoiler Alert: In the end, none of it worked. Whatever progress Noah appeared to make was minimal and temporary. I could never criticize these parents; they gave their son all they had. Having known both autistic people and the people who cared for them, I can only say the burden of that care is unimaginable to the parents of normal children.
I liked following Josh’s daily thoughts. He was a skillful writer and it’s interesting to watch how he applied his skills in this medium. Diaries often serve as emotional safety valves, and Josh does not hold any steam back.
I still both enjoy Noah, and ignore him. Which is, after all, the way most of us fundamentally treat one another.
Only a few times does Josh comment on the larger world, outside his family.
September 12, 1971
Everyone seems to make the same mistake about President Nixon that I used to make as a draftee about my career Army sergeants. We assume there must be a cleverness behind a deviousness that is so obvious. And there never is.
Soon, however, the writer’s attention returns to his disabled son. The news from NoahTown is rarely positive and always sad.
June 4, 1972
Noah has not progressed dramatically this year. Next year, by this time, I will have placed him in an institution. [this did not happen that year] He is a very severely retarded child. Forget the autism and the schizophrenia, he's a damned retard, and I have to get rid of him.
February 1, 1973
I've finally read Pearl Buck's book about her own retarded daughter, A Child Who Never Grew, and was close to tears.
March 16, 1973
When we returned from Santa Barbara last night, Noah looked at us with such genuine love. It will be just as hard to part with him as it is to live with him.
March 17, 1974
I began in confusion and I will end in confusion and the only thing I will have gained is the secure knowledge that there is nothing in between.
February 26, 2009
This is a memoir of raising a severly disabled child. It is gut wrenching and provocative. Josh Greenfeld knows how to tell a story and when it is his own he surpasses himself. One of the first in what becomes an exploding genre of raising difficult children.
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June 2, 2015Brutally honest.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews