Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg

Emily Rapp Black

Hardcover | 11.89 x 1.3 x 18.97 cm | 156 pp

Notting Hill Editions | 2021 | 9781912559268

New York Times-bestselling author Emily Rapp Black here offers a personal examination of how the experiences, art, and disabilities of Frida Kahlo shaped her life as an amputee.

At first sight of Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas, Emily Rapp Black felt an instant connection with the artist. An amputee from childhood, Rapp Black grew up with a succession of prosthetic limbs, and learned that she had to hide her disability from the world. Kahlo sustained lifelong injuries after a horrific bus crash and her right leg was eventually amputated.

In Kahlo’s art, Rapp Black recognised her own life, from the numerous operations to the  compulsion to create to silence pain. Here she tells her story of losing her infant son to the rare fatal genetic disorder Tay-Sachs, giving birth to a daughter, and learning to accept her body. She writes of how Frida Kahlo inspired her to find a way forward when all seemed lost.