Recent Books Concerning Women with Disabilities
By Barbara Duncan (barbaraduncan@gmail.com)
During 2003-2004, several important books concerning disabled women were featured in Disability World reviews, including those by Harilyn Rousso on inequity in special education and publications on the situation of disabled girls and women; the posthumously published book on health care of disabled women by Dr. Sandra Welner; My Path Leads to Tibet, an adventurous autobiography by Sabriye Tenberken, a blind German woman who overcame all the naysayers and pursued her dream to create a school for blind Tibetan children; and reviews of ILO booklets on the success stories of disabled women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia.
Below are descriptions of new books received since those reviews were published.
From There To Here: Stories of Adjustment to Spinal Cord Injury, edited by Gary Karp and Stanley Klein, Ph.D., 269 pages, published 2004 by No Limits Communications, information: www.newmobility.com
This fast-paced well-edited collection of 45 stories of personal journeys after spinal cord injury has earned many excellent reviews. Deborah Kaplan, former director of the World Institute on Disability, stated categorically that she wished she had been given a copy when she became disabled. "For people who are newly disabled, their friends and families" Kaplan said, "this is a resource to be treasured. For everyone else, this book shows how resilient we all are just because we are human."
At least 20 of the stories feature women and their chapters are replete with an equal focus on their families, husbands and children as on their own rehabilitation and their fights to rejoin society. Interestingly, in both the chapters by men and women, the stories have certain similarities: most became disabled through vehicular or sports injuries, most did their rehab at the better known centers - Kessler, TIRR, Craig, Rancho Los Amigos - most are either employed, self-employed or fulltime parents, and unless the editors were actually co-writers, most have excellent communication skills.
These are very well told stories, with a wealth of practical information and range of insights, and the book concludes with a well thought out listing of web-based resources about surviving SCI. My only wish is that some of the stories had illustrated a bit more diversity: the folks who go through substandard rehab, those who have fewer resources after injuries from violence, the ones whose families don't speak English well enough to search out services and connect them with peers, the ones who spend years in nursing homes because their states don't invest in independent living options. But, that would have been a different book...
Homebound: Growing Up with a Disability in America by Cass Irvin, 223 pages, published 2004 by Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Website: www.temple.edu/tempress
"Powerful, well written and hard to put down," says Dr. Fred Hafferty of the University of Minnesota; "A very important book," states Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture. Prof. Garland-Thomson explains why this book is important: "She... lays out the arguments for seeing disability as a sociopolitical issue, for recognizing the connections to the civil rights and women's movements..."
Irvin's prose is inviting, as though someone familiar but not exactly known, has drawn you into her living room, her life and started to tell you stories about how things were in the 50s, now the 60s and so on, until you are all caught up and almost friends. Irvin is a quadriplegic due to polio, and has a really good memory. For example, she makes the famous segregated southern rehab center, Warm Springs, come alive with descriptions of how life in this institution was actually "liberating" to its disabled "patients" and a chance meeting with the young Senator John F. Kennedy. The title word "homebound" is carefully chosen - Cass Irvin literally keeps going home, bound and determined to implement her definition of independent living and political struggle in her most familiar surroundings. This is a gem of a book, imparting lessons painlessly and with admirable honesty.
Working Against Odds: Stories of Disabled Women's Work Lives, by Mary Grimley Mason, with a foreword by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 183 pages, published 2004 by Northeastern University Press, Boston. Website: www.nupress.neu.edu
The author, a professor of English, had polio as a child and only recently had the time to explore how other women with disabilities had fared in their lives and, specifically, in their work. This volume contains the results of 30 interviews with a wide ranging diversity of disabled women. Mason writes that, "My own attitude and understanding of disability changed as a result of this project. I tried to ignore my disability and the disabled community and concentrated on overachieving. When I began to accept my own body and impairments as a part of who I was, I became aware that I was indeed part of the disabled community."
The 30 women are, Mason admits, not statistically representative of disabled women in America, since they are more advantaged: the majority are gainfully employed and have at least some higher education. Nonetheless, their accounts are fascinating, especially when they describe the various ways they dealt with marginalization - some confronting, some trying to assimilate into the non-disabled world, but all eventually talking about how their claiming disability status and dealing with marginalization affected their work experience. About success in work experiences, Mason concludes that a number of factors were significant: a positive family attitude, access to a social system of support, and an economic status that facilitates educational and other opportunities. Finally, the quality of education and counseling about career choices and opportunities were critical.
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