FEEDBACK

Your story on Ayelet Waldman’s book “Bad Mother” [“A Real Mother of a Job,” June 14] continues a recent spate of articles on her and interviews with her, many focusing on her views on abortion.

I am the mother of a 23-year-old son with fragile X syndrome, a condition that caused, in the words of Waldman, a “mentally retarded person.” Her casual use of this term, together with a press that seems to think it’s OK for people to use such derogatory language to describe mentally disabled people, concerns me. Are we ready to respect people who use sexist language and racial slurs? Are we ready to admire them for their honesty?

Susan Salter Reynolds quotes Waldman as saying, “I don’t think of myself as the Nazi who says kill all the mentally retarded people.” Clearly she’s not a Nazi, but this misses the point. We are deciding, one private decision at a time, which lives aren’t worth living, and more pointedly, we are deciding, collectively, that we simply don’t want to live around people like my son.

But Waldman isn’t writing about people not chosen, she’s writing about herself. “This book is about the perils and joys of trying to be a decent mother in a world intent on making you feel like a bad one.” I read that sentence and thought of the irony for my son. He has grown up among mothers and fathers who decided lives like his should not form, that he should not live among us. But he does. He bags groceries at your local market. He buys sandwiches and rents videos at the same shops you frequent. Once, he went to schools with your children. Today he is, like Waldman, “trying to be decent in a world intent on making him feel bad.”

Susan Hoffmann

South Pasadena