Break Out: Finding Freedom When You Don’t Quite Fit the Mold

How can you lead a safe, happy, independent life, even though our culture labels you ” different “?

James R. Hasse provides a pathway to finding some answers for yourself — 51 of them, in fact.
 
Break Finding Freedom When You Don’t Quite Fit The Mold is a modern memoir of 51 riveting short stories about what it means to be presumed too different in a society which, despite its penchant to be dazzled about diversity, puts more value on conformity and tribalism.

Hasse’s series of sometimes-funny, sometimes-sad personal experiences could have involved anyone who, due to race, stature, weight, age or sexual preference, doesn’t match society’s norms.

He just happens to be a white businessman with athetoid cerebral palsy — which means he walks and talks with considerable difficulty due to a brain injury at birth and a lack of complete “motor control.”

Hasse served for 10 years as a Fortune 500 vice president during his 29-year career in corporate communication. Since then, he has devoted 24 years to researching and writing about disability awareness and disability employment issues. He is the author of 14 books, an Accredited Business Communicator and a Global Career Development Facilitator.

By identifying assumptions about himself and the presumptions others have about him, his stories in Break Out provide a timeless roadmap for dealing effectively with differences on a personal as well as cultural level.

Originally published in 1996, this collection of true stories in Break Out is even more timely (and needed) today, given the current political and cultural climate, than it was back then.

In Break Out , Hasse provides a discussion question at the end of each story, prompting you to identify turning points in your own understanding of what it means to be “presumed different” in the U.S. and abroad. That alone makes this rich collection of 51 short stories an important self-help resource and a top-of-the-list book club contender.