Naman Ramachandran Genesius Pictures (“Mrs Lowry & Son,” “Good Luck To You, Leo Grande”) has optioned Emmett de Monterey’s acclaimed memoir “Go the Way Your Blood Beats” – about growing up gay and disabled in 1980s London – for TV adaptation.
Published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, earlier this month, the memoir details how when de Monterey is 18 months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy.
Growing up in southeast London in the 1980s, de Monterey is spat at on the street and prayed over at church. At his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and at his college for disabled students, he’s told he will be expelled if the rumors are true, if he’s gay.
He is then chosen for a first-of-its-kind surgery in America which he hopes will ‘cure’ him and enable him to walk unaided. But the miracle doesn’t occur, and he must reckon with a world that views disabled people as invisible, unworthy of desire. Debbie Gray, managing director of Genesius Pictures, said: “This beautiful, intensely powerful and heart-breaking memoir, ‘Go the Way Your Blood Beats’ is a story about being seen.
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