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From Wallflowers to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult Narratives (Children's Literature Association Series)
by Abbye E. MeyerUses of disability in literature are often problematic and harmful to disabled people. This is also true, of course, in children’s and young adult literature, but interestingly, when disability is paired and confused with adolescence in narratives, compelling, complex arcs often arise. In From Wallflowers to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult Narratives, author Abbye E. Meyer examines different ways authors use and portray disability in literature. She demonstrates how narratives about and for young adults differ from the norm. With a distinctive young adult voice based in disability, these narratives allow for readings that conflate and complicate both adolescence and disability. Throughout, Meyer examines common representations of disability and more importantly, the ways that young adult narratives expose these tropes and explicitly challenge harmful messages they might otherwise reinforce. She illustrates how two-dimensional characters allow literary metaphors to work, while forcing texts to ignore reality and reinforce the assumption that disability is a problem to be fixed. She sifts the freak characters, often marked as disabled, and she reclaims the derided genre of problem novels arguing they empower disabled characters and introduce the goals of disability-rights movements. The analysis offered expands to include narratives in other media: nonfiction essays and memoirs, songs, television series, films, and digital narratives. These contemporary works, affected by digital media, combine elements of literary criticism, narrative expression, disability theory, and political activism to create and represent the solidarity of family-like communities.
Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality
by Teresa MilbrodtSexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality takes a humorous, intimate approach to disability through the stories, jokes, performances, and other creative expressions of people with disabilities. Author Teresa Milbrodt explores why individuals can laugh at their leglessness, find stoma bags sexual, discover intimacy in scars, and flaunt their fragility in ways both hilarious and serious. Their creative and comic acts crash, collide, and collaborate with perceptions of disability in literature and dominant culture, allowing people with disabilities to shape political disability identity and disability pride, call attention to social inequalities, and poke back at ableist cultural norms. This book also discusses how the ambivalent nature of comedy has led to debates within disability communities about when it is acceptable to joke, who has permission to joke, and which jokes should be used inside and outside a community’s inner circle. Joking may be difficult when considering aspects of disability that involve physical or emotional pain and struggles to adapt to new forms of embodiment. At the same time, people with disabilities can use humor to expand the definitions of disability and sexuality. They can help others with disabilities assert themselves as sexy and sexual. And they can question social norms and stigmas around bodies in ways that open up journeys of being, not just for individuals who consider themselves disabled, but for all people.
Children, Deafness, and Deaf Cultures in Popular Media (Children's Literature Association Series)
by John Stephens and Vivian Yenika-AgbawContributions by Cynthia Neese Bailes, Nina Batt, Lijun Bi, Hélène Charderon, Stuart Ching, Helene Ehriander, Xiangshu Fang, Sara Kersten-Parish, Helen Kilpatrick, Jessica Kirkness, Sung-Ae Lee, Jann Pataray-Ching, Angela Schill, Josh Simpson, John Stephens, Corinne Walsh, Nerida Wayland, and Vivian Yenika-AgbawChildren, Deafness, and Deaf Cultures in Popular Media examines how creative works have depicted what it means to be a deaf or hard of hearing child in the modern world. In this collection of critical essays, scholars discuss works that cover wide-ranging subjects and themes: growing up deaf in a hearing world, stigmas associated with deafness, rival modes of communication, friendship and discrimination, intergenerational tensions between hearing and nonhearing family members, and the complications of establishing self-identity in increasingly complex societies. Contributors explore most of the major genres of children’s literature and film, including realistic fiction, particularly young adult novels, as well as works that make deft use of humor and parody. Further, scholars consider the expressive power of multimodal forms such as graphic novel and film to depict experience from the perspective of children. Representation of the point of view of child characters is central to this body of work and to the intersections of deafness with discourses of diversity and social justice. The child point of view supports a subtle advocacy of a wider understanding of the multiple ways of being D/deaf and the capacity of D/deaf children to give meaning to their unique experiences, especially as they find themselves moving between hearing and Deaf communities. These essays will alert scholars of children’s literature, as well as the reading public, to the many representations of deafness that, like deafness itself, pervade all cultures and are not limited to specific racial or sociocultural groups.
Inventing Benjy: William Faulkner’s Most Splendid Creative Leap
by Frédérique SpillInventing Benjy: William Faulkner’s Most Splendid Creative Leap is a groundbreaking work at the intersection of Faulkner studies and disability studies. Originally published in 2009 by Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle as L’Idiotie dans l’œuvre de Faulkner, this translation brings the book to English-language readers for the first time. Author Frédérique Spill begins with a sustained look at the monologue of Benjy Compson, the initial first-person narrator in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Spill questions the reasons for this narrative choice, bringing readers to consider Benjy’s monologue, which is told by a narrator who is deaf and cognitively disabled, as an impossible discourse. This paradoxical discourse, which relies mostly on senses and sensory perception, sets the foundation of a sophisticated poetics of idiocy. Using this form of writing, Faulkner shaped perspective from a disabled character, revealing a certain depth to characters that were previously only portrayed on a shallow level. This style encompasses some of the most striking forms and figures of his leap into modern(ist) writing. In that respect, Inventing Benjy thoroughly examines Benjy’s discourse as an experimental workshop in which objects and words are exclusively modelled by the senses. This study regards Faulkner’s decision to place a disabled character at the center of perception as the inaugural and emblematic gesture of his writing. Closely examining excerpts from Faulkner’s novels and a few short stories, Spill emphasizes how the corporal, temporal, sensorial, and narrative figures of "idiocy" are reflected throughout Faulkner’s work. These writing choices underlie some of his most compelling inventions and certainly contribute to his unmistakable writing style. In the process, Faulkner’s writing takes on a phenomenological dimension, simultaneously dismantling and reinventing the intertwined dynamics of perception and language.
Superheroes Beyond
by Cormac McGarry, Liam Burke, Ian Gordon, and Angela NdalianisContributions by Mitchell Adams, Frederick Luis Aldama, Jason Bainbridge, Djoymi Baker, Liam Burke, Octavia Cade, Hernan David Espinosa-Medina, Dan Golding, Ian Gordon, Sheena C. Howard, Aaron Humphrey, Naja Later, Cormac McGarry, Angela Ndalianis, Julian Novitz, Alexandra Ostrowski Schilling, Maria Lorena M. Santos, Jack Teiwes, and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed In recent years, superheroes on the page and screen have garnered increasing research and wider interest. Nonetheless, many works fall back on familiar examples before arriving at predictable conclusions. Superheroes Beyond moves superhero research beyond expected models. In this innovative collection, contributors unmask international crimefighters, track superheroes outside of the comic book page, and explore heroes whose secret identities are not cisgender men. Superheroes Beyond responds to the growing interest in understanding the unique appeal of superheroes by reveling in the diversity of this heroic type. Superheroes Beyond explores the complexity and cultural reach of the superhero in three sections. The first, “Beyond Men of Steel,” examines how the archetype has moved beyond simply recapitulating the “man of steel” figure to include broader representations of race, gender, sexuality, and ableness. The second section, “Beyond Comic Books,” discusses how the superhero has become a transmedia phenomenon, moving from comic books to toys to cinema screens and beyond. The final section, “Beyond the United States,” highlights the vibrant but often overlooked history of global superhero figures. Together, the essays in this collection form important starting points for taking stock of the superhero’s far-reaching appeal, contributing the critical conversations required to bring scholarship into the present moment and beyond.
Somewheres East of Suez (Sheridan House Ser.)
by Tristan JonesIn 1983 Tristan Jones, well known as one of the finest sailing adventure writers of our time, had his left leg amputated. Refusing to become landbound after a lifetime at sea, he acquired a specially designed, virtually untippable 38-foot trimaran and began to sail around the world. Outward Leg is the tale of his intrepid voyage from San Diego to London. The Improbable Voyage chronicles his heroic journey along an unusual and hazardous route from the North Sea, through the rivers of Central Europe, to the Black Sea. In Somewheres East of Suez, the final installment of this extraordinary saga, Tristan sails eight thousand miles from Istanbul to Thailand. From the tourist- and terrorist-dominated ports of the eastern Mediterranean to African outposts peopled with famine refugees, Tristan maintains the unique perspective of a man who has had minimal contact with society's restraints, using his acerbic wit to spare no fools and offer biting social commentary. After barely escaping with his life in South Yemen, he sets off for the Far East, determined to win out against the difficulties of his disability, whether battling a tropical cyclone or surviving on a dwindling ration of fresh water in the vast windless expanse of the Indian Ocean.
Outward Leg
by Tristan JonesAfter seven years ashore and after having his left leg amputated, Tristan Jones decided to return to the sea. He began to piece together Operation Star and found the perfect vessel in a 36-foot trimaran. In October 1983, Jones and his only crew member, Wally Rediske, set out in Outward Leg from San Diego, intending to circumnavigate the world from west to east by sail.The book is the exciting story of Tristan's preparation for this major seagoing event and the chronicle of half of it. Tristan sailed down the western coast of Central America through the Panama Canal to a small Colombian town. There he had to fight for survival among hostile natives, drug dealers, and uncooperative port officers. He went on to Venezuela, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic during its 1984 revolution. Finally he reached New York and crossed the Atlantic to return to St. Katharine's Dock in London where he began his seagoing life thirty years before.
Just Call Me Stupid
by Tom BirdseyeFifth-grader Patrick can&’t read, but when the new girl next door encourages him to overcome his fears and try, he starts believing he isn&’t so stupid after allPatrick Lowe has always loved imagining his own fantastic stories of brave knights and dragons. Unfortunately, every time he tries to read, his father&’s voice pops up in his head telling him he&’s stupid, and the words on the page suddenly become too blurry to see. By his fifth grade year, Patrick has stopped trying to read altogether. He doesn&’t think he needs any friends, but his new next-door neighbor Celina just won&’t leave him alone. As Patrick and Celina slowly become friends, Celina starts reading The Sword and the Stone to him every afternoon. Patrick is entranced by this mythical world of white knights and vicious beasts, magic and adventure, but no matter how hard he tries, he himself still cannot read. But when Celina betrays his trust, Patrick finds himself betting to the class bully that he can read a story to the entire school. Patrick is determined to show everyone that he&’s no dummy, but can he get past his own fears and finally learn to read?
The Alphabet War
by Diane Burton Robb Gail PiazzaWhen Adam started kindergarten, the teacher wanted him to learn about letters. But "p" looked like "q," and "b" looked like "d." Adam would rather color or mold clay. In first grade, his teacher wanted him to put the letters into words so he could read. That was the beginning of the Alphabet War. "Was" looked like "saw," and "there" looked like "then." Almost everyone else in his class was learning to read, but Adam was fighting a war against letters. In second grade, he had to learn to spell, which was also impossible. Now he was so frustrated he got into trouble and had to go to the principal's office. At last, in third grade, he got the right kind of help. Slowly he began to do better. During fourth grade, he learned that he could excel in other things. That gave him the confidence to take chances with reading. One day he found himself reading a book all by himself!
The Mer-Child
by Robin MorganLove transcends all barriers in this modern fairy tale When the Mer-Child learned the story of the Little Mermaid, he recognized it as the account of his mother and father, the beautiful mermaid and the human man for whom she sacrificed everything. But that love had left their offspring, the Mer-Child, stranded between worlds, as unwelcome in the realm of the sea as in the earth above. Never fitting in, he has been left to wander, searching for friends, his silvery tail fluttering mournfully in the waves. One day he notices a little girl sitting on the beach. Her father must carry her to and from the shore each day because her legs are paralyzed. Her father is black, her mother white, and she is as much an outcast in both communities as the Mer-Child is in his own. Slowly, warily, they find kinship, both in their differences and in their similarities, and they form a bond that changes them forever. What each learns about the value of being different makes this modern-day fairy tale a new classic, with two memorable characters and an enduring message.
Assistive Technology Assessment Handbook (Rehabilitation Science In Practice Series)
by Stefano Federici Marcia SchererAssistive Technology Assessment Handbook, Second Edition, proposes an international ideal model for the assistive technology assessment process, outlining how this model can be applied in practice to re-conceptualize the phases of an assistive technology delivery system according to the biopsychosocial model of disability. <P><P>The model provides reference guidelines for evidence-based practice, guiding both public and private centers that wish to compare, evaluate, and improve their ability to match a person with the correct technology model. This second edition also offers a contribution to the Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology (GATE) initiative, whose activities are strongly focused on the assistive products service delivery model. <P><P>Organized into three parts, the handbook: gives readers a toolkit for performing assessments; describes the roles of the assessment team members, among them the new profession of psychotechnologist; and reviews technologies for rehabilitation and independent living, including brain–computer interfaces, exoskeletons, and technologies for music therapy. <P><P>Edited by Stefano Federici and Marcia J. Scherer, this cross-cultural handbook includes contributions from leading experts across five continents, offering a framework for future practice and research.
A Storm of Strawberries
by CotterillTwelve-year-old Darby loves living on her family's strawberry farm. But a big storm is coming, and it threatens to destroy everything she and her family hold dear.Darby is twelve years old and has Down syndrome. Her favorite things are music, chocolate, and her big sister Kaydee. It's a big weekend for Darby. It's time for their annual chocolate hunt, and it's all she can think about. Well, that and spending time with her big sister. But this year Kaydee's friend Lissa is staying over for the weekend, and she seems to be stealing all of Kaydee's attention. And to make things worse, the strawberry farm is hit by a tornado. Suddenly, it's as though both the chocolate hunt and her sister are slipping away from her. Although the family is prepared for the tornado, they aren't prepared for the storm of emotions that surface when a truth is brought to light. With tension rising within the family, can Darby mend what's been broken when it seems like no one is listening to her? A Storm of Strawberries is a warm, thoughtful, and empathetic novel from acclaimed author Jo Cotterill.
Paws That Changed My Life: A Diary About Training With My First Guide Dog
by Allison NastoffThis book is a diary, adapted from my blog on LiveJournal, in which I chronicle the preparation and training for my first service dog through an in-home training program.
Soaring Into Greatness: A Blind Woman's Vision To Live Her Dreams And Fly
by Gail Hamilton<P>Born ten weeks premature and requiring oxygen to survive, Gail Hamilton's first six weeks of life began within an incubator. <P>Six months later, doctors discovered that Gail had retrolental fibroplasia (RLF), an eye condition caused by the infusion of 100% pure oxygen. By age eleven, she was completely blind. Soaring into Greatness follows Gail's story as her outer visual world merged with her inner vision, forcing her to listen with her inner voice, to follow her heart and tune into her intuition. <P>Subjected to physical and emotional abuse, ostracized and oftentimes feeling alone, Gail's journey is one of the courage and perseverance it takes to find one's way through the darkness and soar. <P> "I believe my desire to fly must be bigger than my fear of falling. Vision is internal, not external, and is guided by my heart, not my eyes. In order to be free, to fly, I must want my dream, feel my dream, and believe that my dream will come true. Most importantly, I must live my dream. I am the creator of my destiny, the composer of my symphony, and I choose to live a life of greatness. " - Gail Hamilton
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia
by Sandra AllenDazzlingly, daringly written, marrying the thoughtful originality of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts with the revelatory power of Neurotribes and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before.Sandra Allen did not know her uncle Bob very well. As a child, she had been told he was “crazy,” that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than she had been alive, and what little she knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed her his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences over sixty, single-spaced pages, the often incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic,” and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world. In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, Allen translates her uncle’s autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Lacing Bob’s narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Allen also shares background information about her family, the culturally explosive time and place of her uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable.
Think Big: Overcoming Obstacles with Optimism
by Jennifer Arnold Bill KleinBestselling authors of Life is Short (No Pun Intended) and stars of TLC's The Little Couple return with an inspirational book that encourages readers to reach for their dreams, no matter what obstacles they may face.Jennifer Arnold and Bill Klein have faced some big challenges in their lives. On the way to becoming a preeminent neonatologist and a successful entrepreneur--as well as parents and television stars--these two have faced prejudice, medical scares, and the uncertainty of life with special needs children. And even though they have dealt with fear, depression, hopelessness, and the urge to give up, they have found a way to persevere. Now they share their wisdom and encouragement for everyone who is facing their own challenges. Drawn from their most popular speaking presentation, Think Big is the inspirational guide for dreaming big, setting goals, and the steps you need to take to get there. Each section includes heartwarming anecdotes full of grace, humor, and wit plus a never-before-seen look inside their personal and professional lives. They have plenty of stories to tell and their unique approach to encountering life's greatest difficulties will inspire a call to action in all of us.
The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness
by Katie BoothFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize&“Meticulously researched, crackling with insights, and rich in novelistic detail&” (Steve Silberman), this&“provocative, sensitive, beautifully written biography&” (Sylvia Nasar) tells the true—and troubling—story of Alexander Graham Bell&’s quest to end deafness.&“Researched and written through the Deaf perspective, this marvelously engaging history will have us rethinking the invention of the telephone.&” —Jaipreet Virdi, PhD, author of Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History We think of Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but that&’s not how he saw his own career. As the son of a deaf woman and, later, husband to another, his goal in life from adolescence was to teach deaf students to speak. Even his tinkering sprang from his teaching work; the telephone had its origins as a speech reading machine.The Invention of Miracles takes a &“stirring&” (The New York Times Book Review), &“provocative&” (The Boston Globe), &“scrupulously researched&” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) new look at an American icon, revealing the astonishing true genesis of the telephone and its connection to another, far more disturbing legacy of Bell&’s: his efforts to suppress American Sign Language. Weaving together a dazzling tale of innovation with a moving love story, the book offers a heartbreaking account of how a champion can become an adversary and an enthralling depiction of the deaf community&’s fight to reclaim a once-forbidden language.Katie Booth has been researching this story for more than fifteen years, poring over Bell&’s papers, Library of Congress archives, and the records of deaf schools around America. But she&’s also lived with this story for her entire life. Witnessing the damaging impact of Bell&’s legacy on her family would set her on a path that overturned everything she thought she knew about language, power, deafness, and the telephone.
I'm Staying at Richard's: Raising the Exceptional Son I Never Expected
by Bernadette AgiusThis inspiring, heartfelt, and powerful memoir by a mother of a child with Down syndrome explores the incredible blessings and challenges of raising a child with disabilities. When Bernadette Agius—an ambitious career-focused woman—became pregnant, she imagined her unborn child attending the best schools and dazzling everyone with his impressive wit, charm, and intelligence. But when the doctors placed her baby boy in her arms and told Bernadette he had Down syndrome, those dreams instantly disappeared. While her first impulse was to fight against this new reality, she soon found the strength to become the champion her son, Richard, would need and deserved. With the help of her husband and a newfound village of professionals, Bernadette forged a new life, discovering along the way that everyone has a different version of normal. Ultimately Richard, now thirty, was able to defy expectation and become an independent adult. Grounded in love, offering a message of hope, and told with humor and honesty, I’m Staying at Richard’s shines a light on the fierce, unwavering love of a mother for her son.
Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected (TED Books)
by Nnedi OkoraforA powerful journey from star athlete to sudden paralysis to creative awakening, award-winning science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan—something a simple operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks. In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths—far greater than when we were unbroken. A guidebook for anyone eager to understand how their limitations might actually be used as a creative springboard, Broken Places & Outer Spaces is an inspiring look at how to open up new windows in your mind.
Disability and Employer Practices: Research across the Disciplines
by Susanne M. BruyèreThis book is about the employment of people with disabilities in the United States and the important role of employer practices. Nearly one in five people report some form of disability, and they are only half as likely to be employed as those without disabilities. With the aging workforce and returning military veterans both contributing to increasing number of disabilities in the workplace, there is an urgent need for better ways to address continuing employment disparities for people with disabilities. Examining employer behaviors is critical to changing this trend. It is essential to understand the factors that motivate employers to engage this workforce and which specific practices are most effective. Disability and Employer Practices features research-based documentation of workplace policies and practices that result in the successful recruitment, retention, advancement, and inclusion of individuals with disabilities. The Cornell team whose work is featured in this book drew from multiple disciplines, data sources, and methodologies to learn where employment disparities for people with disabilities occur and to identify workplace policies and practices that might remediate them. The contributors include individuals with expertise in the fields of business, economics, education, environmental design and analysis, human resources, management, industrial/organizational psychology, public health, rehabilitation psychology, research methods, survey design, educational measurement, statistics, and vocational rehabilitation counseling. Contributors Linda Barrington, Institute for Compensation Studies, ILR School, Cornell University Susanne M. Bruyère, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University Hassan Enayati, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University William A. Erickson, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University Kevin Hallock, Institute for Compensation Studies, ILR School, Cornell University Arun Karpur, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University Lisa Nishii, Human Resource Studies, ILR School, Cornell University Ellice Switzer, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University Sarah von Schrader, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University Sara Van Looy, K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, ILR School, Cornell University
Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917-1991
by Claire L. ShawIn Deaf in the USSR, Claire L. Shaw asks what it meant to be deaf in a culture that was founded on a radically utopian, socialist view of human perfectibility. Shaw reveals how fundamental contradictions inherent in the Soviet revolutionary project were negotiated—both individually and collectively— by a vibrant and independent community of deaf people who engaged in complex ways with Soviet ideology.Deaf in the USSR engages with a wide range of sources from both deaf and hearing perspectives—archival sources, films and literature, personal memoirs, and journalism—to build a multilayered history of deafness. This book will appeal to scholars of Soviet history and disability studies as well as those in the international deaf community who are interested in their collective heritage. Deaf in the USSR will also enjoy a broad readership among those who are interested in deafness and disability as a key to more inclusive understandings of being human and of language, society, politics, and power.
We Walk: Life with Severe Autism (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work)
by Amy S. LutzIn this collection of beautiful and raw essays, Amy S. F. Lutz writes openly about her experience—the positive and the negative—as a mother of a now twenty-one-year-old son with severe autism. Lutz's human emotion drives through each page and challenges commonly held ideas that define autism either as a disease or as neurodiversity. We Walk is inspired by her own questions: What is the place of intellectually and developmentally disabled people in society? What responsibilities do we, as citizens and human beings, have to one another? Who should decide for those who cannot decide for themselves? What is the meaning of religion to someone with no abstract language? Exploring these questions, We Walk directly—and humanly—examines social issues such as inclusion, religion, therapeutics, and friendship through the lens of severe autism. In a world where public perception of autism is largely shaped by the "quirky geniuses" featured on television shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Good Doctor, We Walk demands that we center our debates about this disorder on those who are most affected by its impacts.
More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan
by Dennis J. FrostHow does a small provincial city in southern Japan become the site of a world-famous wheelchair marathon that has been attracting the best international athletes since 1981?In More Than Medals, Dennis J. Frost answers this question and addresses the histories of individuals, institutions, and events—the 1964 Paralympics, the FESPIC Games, the Ōita International Wheelchair Marathon, the Nagano Winter Paralympics, and the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games that played important roles in the development of disability sports in Japan. Sporting events in the postwar era, Frost shows, have repeatedly served as forums for addressing the concerns of individuals with disabilities. More Than Medals provides new insights on the cultural and historical nature of disability and demonstrates how sporting events have challenged some stigmas associated with disability, while reinforcing or generating others.Frost analyzes institutional materials and uses close readings of media, biographical sources, and interviews with Japanese athletes to highlight the profound—though often ambiguous—ways in which sports have shaped how postwar Japan has perceived and addressed disability. His novel approach highlights the importance of the Paralympics and the impact that disability sports have had on Japanese society.
Twenty-Two Cents an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages
by Doug CrandellIn Twenty-Two Cents an Hour, Doug Crandell uncovers the harsh reality of people with disabilities in the United States who are forced to work in unethical conditions for subminimum wages with little or no opportunity to advocate for themselves, while wealthy CEOs grow even wealthier as a direct result. As recently as 2016, the United States Congress enacted bipartisan legislation which continued to allow workers with disabilities to legally be paid far lower than the federal minimum wage. Drawing on ongoing federal Department of Justice lawsuits, the horrifying story of Henry's Turkey Farm in Iowa, and more, Crandell shows the history of the policies that have led to these unjust outcomes, examines who benefits from this legislation, and asks important questions about the rise of a disability industrial complex. Exposing this complex—which is rooted in profit, lobbying, and playing on the emotions of workers' parents and families, as well as the public—Crandell challenges readers to reexamine how we treat some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. Twenty-Two Cents an Hour forces the reader to face the reality of this exploitation, and builds the framework needed for reform.
Ambassadors of Social Progress: A History of International Blind Activism in the Cold War (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
by Maria Cristina GalmariniAmbassadors of Social Progress examines the ways in which blind activists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe entered the postwar international disability movement and shaped its content and its course. Maria Cristina Galmarini shows that the international work of socialist blind activists was defined by the larger politics of the Cold War and, in many respects, represented a field of competition with the West in which the East could shine. Yet, her study also reveals that socialist blind politics went beyond propaganda. When socialist activists joined the international blind movement, they initiated an exchange of experiences that profoundly impacted everyone involved. Not only did the international blind movement turn global disability welfare from philanthropy to self-advocacy, but it also gave East European and Soviet activists a new set of ideas and technologies to improve their own national movements. By analyzing the intersection of disability and politics, Ambassadors of Social Progress enables a deeper, bottom-up understanding of cultural relations during the Cold War. Galmarini significantly contributes to the little-studied history of disability in socialist Europe, and ultimately shows that disability activism did not start as an import from the West in the post-1989 period, but rather had a long and meaningful tradition that was rooted in the socialist system of welfare and needed to be reinvented when this system fell apart.