Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice

Description

Imagine this: you're a beautiful, blonde, stylish, highly intelligent, gregarious young woman-curious about the world with a lot to say about it. But every time you open your mouth, a stutter comes out. In order to do something as simple as say your name, you must physically force the word. Which doesn't always look so pretty. At the age of seven, Katherine Preston learned that she was a stutterer. From that point on she battled the fear of communicating with the world by denying that her speech was an issue. Finally, a humiliating experience inspired her to take an unusual action. In Out With It she tells the hilariously heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of her year spent traveling around the United States to interview more than 100 stutterers, speech therapists, and researchers. What begins as a search for a cure becomes a journey that debunks the misconceptions that shroud the condition and a love story that changes her perspective on normality. Out With It offers a fresh perspective on our obsession with physical perfection and an exploration of what our voice, and our vulnerabilities, means to each of us.
It sheds light on an ancient condition that afflicts approximately 4 million in the U.S. and 60 million people worldwide. In addition to experts, Katherine interviewed writers, actresses, musicians, social workers, psychologists, farmers, and financiers-men and women of all walks of life who were working to overcome their speech problems. Combining memoir and investigative journalism, Out With It is an incredibly compelling, informative and heartwarming memoir about understanding and embracing one's self and the voice within.

Reviews

"Katherine Preston's memoir is an astute and personal exploration on the human experience.... A must-read."--Emily Blunt, actress

Author description

Katherine Preston inexplicably lost her previously "normal" voice at the age of seven and faced the terror and hopelessness of communicating with the world through a stutter. At twenty-four she left her native London to road-trip across the United States interviewing stutterers, therapists and researchers. Today she lives in Brooklyn as a writer and public speaker.