«Without limits», sixteen lives beyond barriers – Corriere.it

“It doesn’t matter how you were born, it matters what you become,” he says Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter
. Wanting to find a thread that binds the sixteen lives, very different from each other, told by the journalist and writer Giacomo Fasola in the book Without limits. Girls and boys beyond disability
(De Agostini, illustrations by Giulia Tassi, for 9 years) is precisely that maxim: because the lives in question are tests of courage, determination, patience, love and as such they have the added value of representing models for those who don’t want to give up on the first difficulties but also on the second, third… hundredths.

The concept is effectively brought into focus in the story that opens the collection, that of Nicolas Hamilton, younger brother of multiple Formula 1 world champion Lewis. Nic was born prematurely with cerebral palsy which, in his case, causes coordination and movement problems especially in his legs. Seeing his brother Nic, he becomes passionate about engines and, growing up, he passes the driver’s license exam: he becomes the first person with a disability to participate in the British Touring Car Championship, a competition followed by thousands of people.

Seeing disability as an advantage, rather than a limitation. Feeling complete even with what’s missing or doesn’t work as it should. Ambra Sabatini and Aaron Fotheringham know something about it. The first is a girl who grew up on bread and sport until she lost her leg in a motorcycle accident, it was 2019. Instead of getting depressed or feeling sorry for himself, he starts googling how to continue playing sports with a prosthesis. The result, two years later, on September 4, 2021, was seen by the whole world: Ambra competed in the Tokyo Paralympics in the hundred meters and won (incidentally in front of two other Italian athletes) and establishing the world record. Instead Aaron, born in 1991, was born with spina bifida, a malformation of the spine that forces him to use a wheelchair. «I’m not in prison, I only have two wheels attached to my butt» he says. Maybe he’s right given what he can do: Aaron invented Wheelchair Motocross, a kind of wheelchair skateboarding with backflips.

Sport is just one of the areas in which Fasola, with sensitivity and measure, explores disability, the diversity of the protagonists and the uniqueness of their stories. Applies to science, con astrophysicist Stephen Hawking who for years lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or for the nuclear physicist Fulvio Frisone, born with dystonic spastic tetraparesis; for Belita Springmühl Tejada, the first designer with Down syndrome at London Fashion Week or for Vitoria Bueno, who was born without arms and became a formidable dancer. Again Sammy Basso fighting against time: he lives with the underlying disease of premature ageing; or the Dustin of the tv series Stranger Thingsalias Gaten Matarazzo (Italian grandfather from Avellino),
who fulfilled his dream of becoming an actor. Today he also uses his popularity to talk about cleidocranial dysplasia, the genetic anomaly with which he was born and which is responsible, among other things, for his toothless smile. Those in the book are people who struggle every day and who can often count on the support and support of families, communities, friends, associations. And now also on that of the readers.

Among the special lives of Without limits there is that of Paul Steven Miller, a lawyer with achondroplasia, the first cause of dwarfism. Miller, 135 centimeters, was chosen in 2009 by then US President Barack Obama as a special assistant. What Obama said about him applies to all the protagonists of the book: “In a world where people with disabilities are still too often told ‘you can’t’, Paul spent his life proving the opposite”.