Furthering Conversations: A Review of “Disability Visibility”

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“Disbability Visibility” is a compilation of essays and short-stories from the 21st Century written by people with disabilities. Compiled by editor Alice Wong, the essays and short stories feature narrative glimpses of the lives of each author, from childhoods to relationships, from careers to activism, each story has follows the thread of disability into the intersections of everyday life. “Disability Visibility” is an anthology written both for the people who have never felt seen, and for people who want to expand their horizons and understand the complexity of our human nature. It is a chance for the authors to amplify their voices, their impassioned words giving insight into our perceptions and the reality of just how every experience is unique. It is a chance for the reader to grow in empathy and understanding towards your neighbor, and a must read for those who want to explore disability and intersectionality from a lived-experience perspective.

Authors like Shoshana Kessok, who walk the reader through the complexities of the medical system and the misguidance of bipolar disorder, help readers to get a glimpse of the fallacies of healthcare. But Kessok doesn’t leave the reader with the complications of getting your medications adjusted and the never ending appointments. Rather, they acknowledge that once you receive the help you need, your life can stabilize, and reaching out for help is always better than suffering alone. They talk about the interweaving of mental illness with creativity and how so many people feel that real artists have to suffer (mentally, physically, emotionally etc.). Kessok says, “I read books about people theorizing about the connection between mental illness and creativity and I shake my head. I don’t need to know the connection, because if there is one, it doesn’t matter to me. I take my medicine and work my craft at the same time because I don’t need to suffer as an artist” (Kessok, 187). Stories like these battle against society’s preconceived notions and reveal the truth about mental illness, while also serving as cautionary tales of putting too much truth into stereotypes.

Each story is unique, as unique as the author who crafted them, and stories about feeling different are not uncommon. June Eric-Udorie speaks about how having nystagmus made her feel broken, always praying for healing that would never come. In “When You Are Waiting to Be Healed”, she acknowledges the desire to be without disability and the sometimes confusing choice one can make when coming to terms with the identity of “disabled”. But she also acknowledges the joy of understanding yourself. “I come to church happy in the body I exist in; I come to church knowing that I am not a mistake waiting to be fixed,” June says (Eric-Udorie, 58). June gives the reader an understanding of growth and healing beyond definition, providing concepts that may fight with the reader’s previous conceived notions of healing.

This anthology is a series of love letters to the understanding of yourself, a celebration of difference, and a reconciliation between the past and the present. It proves that there is no predetermined way of living, that there is a freedom in expression and value in being in relationship with others who share a thread of understanding. “Disability Visibility” works around the reader’s biases, scraping away the force-fed egregious narratives fed to us by society and replacing it with bubbles of the lived experience of people with disabilities through all aspects of life. Ariel Henley, whose essay titled, “There’s a Mathematical Equation That Proves I’m Ugly”, which redefines our understanding of beauty, sums up the artistry found in each essay with a beautiful quote about her experience. “But art isn’t necessarily about beauty. Art is supposed to make you feel something, and I began to realize my appearance was my art. My body, my face, my scars told a story- *my* story” (Henley, 46).

A compendium of innovation, beauty, and wholeness, “Disability Visibility” is a quick read, offering readers a chance to see themselves and to see the lived experiences of people with disabilities. This book shows readers how empathy is the answer, and how we get there is by viewing each and every person, just as they are, seeing the value in all of our varied experiences. 5/5

If You Can’t Fast, Give – RAB style response

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“If You Can’t Fast, Give”, Maysoon Zayid, from Disability Visability

This chapter is comparatively short when it comes to the chapters of Disability Visibility, but I have chosen it because it explores a people, culture and religion that I have very little knowledge about. The chapter titled, “If you can’t fast, give” follows the perspective of the author Maysoon Zayid, a female comedian and actor (I had to look the author up on the internet to determine that she was a woman because she doesn’t give many indicators of her gender in the text.). She describes her experience growing up in a Muslim household, observing the feasts and sacred rituals of Islam as a disabled woman with cerebral palsy. Even though she was exempt from performing the fasting ritual due to her health, she often performed the ritual as a child, during Ramadan – a time to fast and forsake earthly pleasures. As she grew older, it became difficult for Zayid to perform fasting due to her health, and so she began to give to those less fortunate as an alternative fasting. Zayid encourages all Muslim’s who desire to observe Ramadan, but can’t do to their health, to not be ashamed, but to “channel their devotion to charity.”.

Quotations:
“Regardless of the heat, it’s fun to fast for Ramadan when you are in a country where the majority of the folks around you are starving.” – (Pg. 37)

“The Qur’an states clearly in Surah 2, Ayat 185 that those who have medical conditions are pardoned, so I was treated like a champ for fasting. […] I knew that fasting against the odds I had been born with, I’d totally get into heaven and, more important, would get amazing gifts for Eid.” (Pg. 36-37)

“I miss fasting, but I’m happy to take on my newest mission of reminding those who can’t’ fast that there is no reason to put themselves at risk. Muslims fast so they can suffer a little. It is important not to die in the process.” (Pg. 38)

Takeaways:

It’s a wee bit too short. I would have like to have known a little more about the author and her experience, but what she does talk about is enlightening and engaging. When it come’s to the Abrahamic traditions, I’m most familiar with Christianity and Judaism, and know comparatively little about Islam. I knew Ramadan was an important time in the Muslim calendar, but very little else, so to have that explained was very nice. I love the part about “receiving gifts at Eid”, Eid being the celebration that follows Ramadan. It shows that she is like any child – she is not completely selfless or anything; she likes the attention and gifts that come from the act of fasting. She talks about the difficulty of observing her religious rituals in America, and how we often think of these acts as evil, (It’s interesting to contrast it to the other Abrahamic traditions when they observe their fasting traditions, or to compare it to secular fasts for health or mental reasons. You may have your problems with Islam, but fasting as a religious observance shouldn’t be one of them.) In the end, she had to stop fasting because it negatively affected her health, but she was able to still find other ways to follow the tenants of her religion (after all, fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam, (along with tithing, pilgrimage, prayer, and the declaration of faith.) It’s nice to read an essay on the positive aspects of Islam.

Falling/Burning

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Falling/Burning // Shoshana Kessock Summary:

The chapter I read was written by an author with bipolar disorder. They walk the reader through the complexities of the medical system as a creative with a mental disability. The chapter is an anecdotal narrative about their life, starting from a younger age, flying and falling and soaring and burning through the days. They share their experience with therapists, then psychiatrists, medication, then lack thereof. They sought out information about their disorder and were misinformed, under-informed, and poorly guided. The crux of the chapter is when the author explains their devastating ten year season from 2002-2012, which was ultimately “resolved” thanks to proper information and cautiously prescribed medicine.

A few quotes from the ten year period:

“Everything here is… hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch… this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that”

“That was the illness talking”

Summary of Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents // Keith Grant-Davie:

Keith Grant-Davie outlines what makes up a rhetorical situation in their essay, Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents. They begins by elaborating on the wholeness of a rhetorical situation, then breaks down that wholeness into exigence, rhetor, audience, and constraints. Exigence, as defined is, “an imperfection marked by urgency. It is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be”. Exigence exists in a multiplicity. It begs to ask the questions: what is the discourse? Why does it exist? What should it accomplish? Rhetors are not as simple as one would think. Some may be unidentifiable and are complex and multifaceted by nature. Audience, similarly, to rhetors, could be anyone. Anyone that could potentially be the audience, is. The role of the audience is persuaded by the rhetor and discourse, but at the end of the day, it’s still a conversation and the audience is a prevalent part of the rhetorical situation. Constraints are, “persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence.” Constraints are preset circumstances/models that a rhetor and audience are held to.

“…where the aim is not victory over the opponent but a state of identification, where writer and reader are able to meet in the audience identity the writer has created within the discourse” 

In Reflection of both readings:

I found this chapter to be a accurate testimony to how mentally disabled folks navigate through life, in relation to creativity, medication, school, motivation, and frustration. It’s a tale so personal to this author, but true for many others. Through the scope of a “rhetorical situation”, the rhetors Shoshana Kessock, Alice Wong, and potentially others I am unaware of (are unspoken), are constrained by the length of a chapter, the english language, the obstacles of presenting a story as a disabled person, and the audience‘s knowledge regarding bipolar. I believe the audience extends much further than myself. The rhetorical choices made by the author lead me to believe that they hope struggling disabled authors to read their story. They persuade inspiration and hopefulness.

“Unbroken: Alice Sheppard’s Revelations in Dance”

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Title and Author: “So. Not. Broken” by Alice Sheppard, from Disability Visibility

Objective Summary: 

Alice Sheppard begins her short autobiographical piece “So. Not. Broken” from Disability Visibility by sharing a joke with her physical therapist as she arrives at an appointment. “I’m broken”, she says, but it has nothing to do with her disability (182). As a choreographer and dancer, Alice is used to living with a degree of physical brokenness, but not in the way her nondisabled audiences may immediately assume. “Many nondisabled people attribute a degree of brokenness to disability”, she writes, adding “it arises from the medicalization of our bodyminds” (182). For Alice, learning how to dance involved figuring out her body through the mechanics of her crutches, and her chair, as well as without them, leading her to new capabilities in performance. To Alice, the chair is a part of her body, because it becomes part of her embodied space, in dance and in daily life. She shares that her perspectives in dance were not just those of a disabled person; but also of a woman, and of a black woman; and she believes all of these intersections of identity impact embodied experiences in real ways. The “expressive capacity of bodies”, Alice writes, is surely enhanced by a variety of embodied forms, and she admits her new approach to the body as a whole gives her hope for a bright career future.

Quotations: 

  1. “My very first problem as a dancer was figuring out my chair. I had to learn how to move in it, of course, but I also had to understand what it meant as a black woman to use a chair onstage, in the studio, and in the world”. (page 183)
  1. “When I discovered the concept of embodiment—a word I use to describe the way in which my body takes shape and form—I made another breakthrough: My chair is my body.” (page 183)
  1. “My crutches and chair are not tools that compensate for my impairment. Nor are they simply devices that I use for traveling across the studio. I understand these starting points as embodiments, each of which has different movement possibilities.” (pages 183-184)

Takeaways and Reflection:

Clearly, Alice is speaking as someone with lived experience in multiple marginalized identities, and she centralizes the way those intersect in her life through her dance and stage performance career. The narrative does meander a little to fill in the details of her personal life, but one main claim she makes is that although brokenness and disability are affiliated through the medicalization of the American bodymind, this is both a harmful and inaccurate connotation which should be abandoned. It’s evident through Alice’s experience as a choreographer that mobility assistance devices are also a part of embodied selves, and can absolutely participate in the dance. In fact, she proposes that these devices can even expand the creative experience of dancers once integrated into routines. Alice’s narrative of her journey towards a greater self-understanding could be useful to many disabled and nondisabled in her audience, especially to those that might feel drawn towards athletic pursuits. At the end of the day, everyone must accept their body as it comes, because looking at the self as a lesser version of another person just seeds feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing.

A Supernova-Sized Burst of Accessibility: RAB Response

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  1. “How a Blind Astronomer Found a Way to Hear the Stars” by Wanda Díaz-Merced from Disability Visibility

  2. Summary:

Wanda Díaz-Merced’s short personal narrative, “How a Blind Astronomer Found a Way to Hear the Stars” was originally performed as a TedTalk in February 2016. Beginning with a description of how supernovas work, Díaz-Merced explains how the star she was studying at the time she lost her sight, became a magnetar. Detected by their gamma-ray bursts, astronomers are able create pictures of the most energetic part of the supernova explosion. Something important to understand about them is that people are unable to see these events occur with the naked eye because we can only see a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Díaz-Merced emphasizes this because the only reason why astronomers create visual constructions of supernovas is because its a common and generally easy way to interpret them. That is, if you’re a sighted person.

When she lost her sight, Díaz-Merced thought that she might have to leave her field because of the lack of accessibility. Instead, she decided to make the work accessible herself, so she could continue to study the work she loves. Díaz-Merced. Because all light is a curve which can be turned into a table of numbers, those numbers can be translated into sound. Her and her collaborators worked really hard on this sonification project that had never been done before, and now “she is able to do physics at the level of the best astronomer,” (Díaz-Merced, 170). After telling her story of accessibility innovation, Díaz-Merced bought the TedTalk to a close with a last thought for the audience, which is that anyone can develop a disability in their lives, and most people eventually do. However, this doesn’t mean people should be excommunicated from their area of work. Scientific fields in particular have many systemic barriers in place that aren’t keeping up the outer world’s increasing focus on accessibility.

3. Quotations:

-“If people with disabilities are allowed into the scientific field, an explosion, a huge titanic burst of knowledge will take place, I am sure” (Díaz-Merced, 173).

-“I think science is for everyone. It belongs to the people, and it has to be available to everyone, because we are all natural explorers” (Díaz-Merced, 172).

-‘While other countries told me that the study of perception techniques in order to study astronomy data is not relevant to astronomy because there are no blind astronomers in the field, South Africa said, “We want people with disabilities to contribute to the field”‘ (Díaz-Merced, 172).

4. Reflection and Review:

I found the last quote I listed to be particularly interesting because when the various countries Díaz-Merced offered her new techniques to rejected them because there was no perceived need, its so clearly obvious that the reason there aren’t blind astronomers is because of the lack of accessibility which she was attempting to correct. It reminds me of a piece I read once about planes that have seen combat, where when the surviving plane came back from battle, engineers looked at where the damage on them was, and wanted to reinforce those areas. However, eventually someone pointed out that these were the surviving planes that they were looking at, and what they really need to do is to reinforce the areas of the planes where there was no damage, because those were in fact the places that if hit, would send the plane spiraling to the ground.

My big takeaway from this piece is that organizations can’t look at the people who maneuver easily through their field to decide how to accommodate people with disabilities, because nondisabled people are the ones the organization was built to cater to. They have to look to the people who are being left behind. They need to listen to them and their needs, and then work to create space for them, by either allowing disabled people to innovate the system themselves like Díaz-Merced, or working in groups that have direct contact with people with disabilities and prioritize their thoughts.

Here’s a link to the TedTalk:

Wanda Diaz Merced: How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars | TED Talk

Ho, Sandy, “Canfei to Canji: The Freedom of Being Loud”

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Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020.

Summary:

The author Sandy Ho starts her essay with the birth of her nephew. She describes an instance where she is reminded of her family’s outlook on disability, in particular the cultural origin of it. She explains that she had been told often as a child, she was lucky and should be grateful to have been born in the US. Her parents immigrated from Vietnam and Hong Kong before she was born, carrying the general sentiment towards disability that was common in East Asia at the time. For context Ho explains that, in 1968 Deng Pufang, a disabled man, founded the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped and led the China Disabled Persons’ Federation. However, there would be no change in the openly hostile environment of East Asia until the 1980s. This is around the time Ho’s parents emigrated to the US. It was practically impossible for a disabled person to make a living and live a comfortable life before, but in the 1980s that was only gradually changing. People with disabilities were popularly considered useless. It was not until 1990s that a noticeable shift in attitudes occurred, with the introduction of the colloquial term “canji”, a word meaning sickness to replace the word “canfei”, meaning useless, when describing a person with Disability. Most of Ho’s relatives hold similar attitudes, some even encouraging her mother to abandon her at the hospital after her birth. Sandy ho starts to close her essay by discussing the tragedy of Sagamihara in 2016, an incident where nineteen disabled people where massacred, while twenty-six were left injured in a violent demonstration of the belief that disabled people should be euthanized. She makes a point; the saddest part of the whole crime is the fact that the Japanese government refuses to release the victims’ names to help the victims’ families from avoiding public shame for their relative’s disability. Sandy ends the essay by expressing how important she has found the struggle to express herself and exist in both her cultural world as an Asian American with a disability.

Quotes:

“Now I understand the exchange of silence for the comfort of other as oppression; in this case because I still fearing knowing how little value my life might hold for others.” (113)

“As a marginalized disabled person I want it all: for all of us to remain as fixtures in our shared world views, for the space to do more than survive, and for our voices and presence to experience the indelible freedom that comes with being louder. ”(116)

“Some relatives told [Sandy Ho’s] mother she should abandon [Sandy] at the hospital because [her] disability diagnosis meant [Sandy] was canfei, a “useless burden”.” (114)

Reflection:

This was one of the three sections of Disability Visibility that I found the most disturbing so far. Sandy discusses her experience in a less positive way than others have in this book. Not that any of them have been sunshine and rainbows. But Sandy is making a point to mention gruesome and ugly aspects of her knowledge of ableism. I appreciate this a considerable amount. While discussing positive aspects of being disabled is great, I think it is hard to fully grasp any situation without discussing the negative aspects of it. By no means is it a person with disability’s responsibility to convey these negatives, if they do not want to, they do not need to. But, It helps others gain insight when they do. Most of the events Sandy referenced, I did not know about prior. They are not really discussed, kept off the mainstream radar. Her sharing this has inspired me to do some more digging for issues surrounding disability and keep my eyes peeled for news relating to these discussions.

Disability Visibility: Last but not Least – Embracing Asexuality by Keshia Scott

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Scott explains her discovery of her asexual identity in this story, and its relationship with her blindness. She explains that she was always the last of her friends to achieve life milestones, and how as an impressionable teenager she had many insecurities and wanted to fit in with her friends. She was surrounded in her teenage years by other disabled people, and her insecurities about her appearance were amplified by her friends’ ideas of what the ideal woman was like. She explores her lack of interest in men and how throughout her life she has felt indifferent about sex. Many of her experiences with men that she recalls consist of groping and sexual harassment, and as she grew older she has felt more anxiety about explaining her life choices: to not be married, have kids, be sexual with other people. 

She details her discovery of pleasuring herself and the term asexual. She had a conversation with a classmate who said, “disabled people are either asexual or hypersexual” (126), and at first she was taken aback by the blatant ableism in this discussion. Later, she did more research about asexuality and realized that she had the wrong idea in her head about what asexuality was. Now she uses the term and has talk some friends and family about her identity.

At the end she explains her happiness with her independent life. That she is at grad school and many of her friends have taken different paths in life. At the end she explains, “The thought of sex is still uninteresting to me, the thought of having kids is still unpaltable to me, and still, all the time, learning what it is to be a woman, with all that this entails. I look forward to what happens next. And every day I’m still smiling.” (128)

There is a lot in Scott’s writing about the connections between disability and asexuality, which I found overlapped with a lot of what the keywords reading also talked about, that queerness and disability often go hand in hand. Howveer, what Scott and many other people in the asexual and disabled communities often points out, the two occur on their own. There is intersectionality to these communities, but they are not one in the same. Scott even discusses this, that she, “ couldn’t bear it if [her] sexuality ended up being determined by disability” (127) Asexuality could often be misdiagnosed as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and many people on the autism spectrum also face a lot of stigma by often automatically being labelled as asexual. I’ve found too that in the asexual community there was at one point an effort to disconnect asexuality from disorder, but there was also quickly push back against this as asexual people realized that there was overlap in the communities and to try to fully separate them was to disregard disabled asexuals. 

Asexuality is very fluid, with different people falling into different levels of attraction, both sexual and romantic, so seeing Scott’s own detailed account of her relationship with her sexuality was very eye opening to me. And I am glad that she as a disabled asexual has written about her relationship between these two identities.

In Sickness and In Difference

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(I apologize in advance but I am doing two essays. I figured a few of us might choose one of them, but I still wanted to give my thoughts on it!)

CW: Sex toys

Keisha Scott’s “Last but Not Least- Embracing Asexuality”

Jamison Hill’s “Love Means Never Having to Say… Anything”

“Love Means Never Having to Say… Anything” begins with Jamison Hill’s desire to say “I love you” to his partner, Shannon. Hill recounts the times when he thought he was in love with previous partners, when he could still speak and have conversations with them, before defining his condition of myalgic encephalomyelitis, a condition that keeps him bedridden and unable to speak. Hill continues by speaking about how he had met Shannon and how their shared condition turned into a relationship, and how that relationship between two sick people can be just as good as a relationship between a sick person and a healthy person. He talks about the way they take care of each other and share their lives together without vocal conversation and he ends with his painful attempt to vocalize his love. The essay finishes with his failed attempt, but Shannon’s understanding of what he wanted to say.

“Last but Not Least- Embracing Asexuality” begins with Keisha Scott’s recounting of always being the last person to hit milestones. From her blindness, to getting her period late, Scott tells of how she felt different from everyone around her, but she desperately wanted to be a woman. She continues with talking about how all of her friends were interested in children, boys, and having sex, being jealous of the attention that her friends got from men, and the desire to gain respect by finally becoming a woman via getting her period. She talks about how she had started by conforming to gender norms for women but was still late in the process, how she first experienced desire to when she first saw porn and masturbated. Scott recalls being disillusioned with the concept of sex, how nothing felt right and that she took a while to understand the sensation of sex. Scott then talks about buying sex toys, dodging questions about sex and relationships, and feeling a “wrongness” that she didn’t align to societal norms. Scott continues by talking about how she took a course on feminism and sexuality and how a conversation about sexuality and disability made her to begin questioning the meaning of “asexuality”. Scott ends the essay by researching asexuality, finding peace in the narratives she read and explaining that she has no desire for sex or children, contrary to what the world around her says.

Quote Bank:

“When we are together, we spend weeks in bed, mostly holding each other, our bodies aligned like two pieces of broken plate glued back together” (Hill, 263)

“These failed romances remind me of the baffling incompatibilities two people can have, but also how love can transcend even the most insurmountable obstacles when you find the right person” (Hill, 264).

“I had never thought about it like that- the possibility of two sick people being in a successful relationship together” (Hill, 265).

“I started to read more on asexuality, read personal stories of others- both disabled and able-bodied – who were completely fine: some were married, some had kids, some have sex once in a blue moon, some have never had sex, some were single” (Scott, 127).

“I already faced discrimination and ableist views from society in so many other ways; I couldn’t bear it if my sexuality ended up being determined by my disability” (Scott, 127).

Reflection:

I chose to do two analyses because I identified so strongly with one, but I also understand that it might be a popular choice in our cohort. So firstly, I will talk about Jamison Hill’s “Love Means Never Having to Say… Anything”. There is a societal pressure that in relationships, certain things *have* to be performed. A romantic first kiss, a declaration of love, a passionate urgency in the early stages that gets rekindled over time. I think that Hill does a great job in subverting these expectations through his writing of his relationship with Shannon. He acknowledges that kissing next to your expended body fluids is not the most romantic thing, but for two sick people, it works because there is a mutual understanding of illness. He might not be able to vocally say “I love you”, but the ways in which they take care of each other are acts of love in themselves, not needing to be spoken aloud. As someone who is a hopeful romantic, I understand to the depth of his definition of “two broken plates glued back together”. There is a fascination with perfection in relationships as well, everything has to appear perfect at all times to the world because no one should know if you have tension in your relationship. However, Hill defines the two of them as broken plates, something deemed by society as “apart”, but together they are “whole”. While they might not be “broken” in the same way, it is through that brokenness that they find wholeness together. The art of *kinstugi*, or repairing broken pottery with gold, allows the artist to highlight the brokenness through something beautiful, and I think that is exactly what Hill has done in this essay. He has taken the brokenness and uniqueness of two people and shown how together, their love and understanding is so beautiful it is beyond words or expectations.

“Last But Not Least- Embracing Asexuality” is one of the most relatable pieces of writing I have read all year. Aside from being blind, the bulk of Scott’s essay was a reflection of my own experience with having chronic illness and discovering my sexuality. As a whole, Scott talks about the dual struggle of being different from her blindness, but then also not having the same feelings and desires as her peers. I have written about the concept of asexuality and disability before, but I will reiterate the point that those who identify as asexual are even more likely to be ostracized in the spaces they occupy. For one, if they are in heteronormative spaces, it is possible they will be ostracized for being disabled. But in disabled spaces, where people with disabilities have fought to be seen as regular sexual beings, asexuals are more likely to be ostracized for not pushing the sexual narrative. There is a unique difficulty that presents itself in these spaces as is, but to have a sense of dual-difference is even more challenging. Despite all of this, I cannot help but feel so validated in Scott’s narrative that she created. In a world that is simultaneously so sex-forward but prudish towards the expression of sexuality, to have any sort of dual-identity with asexuality can be a very lonely process. I can certainly identify with her finding peace in the stories that she read of other asexuals, and it brings me peace to read her narrative. From a disability studies standpoint, I would absolutely recommend anyone studying the intricacies of intersectionality to read this essay. It does a fantastic job at weaving together the truths of gender performance, societal expectations, sexuality, disability, and the general sense of belonging that plagues our existence.

The Artist’s Embrace of Oneself

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The documentary provided a raw, poignant view of the creative process of disabled performers who took the stage in 2012 to share their stories as disabled people. The yearly show explored disability and race, gender, sex and sexuality, and featured many artists of color and LQBTQ artists. The documentary itself, fully titled Sins Invalid: An Unashamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, was directed by one of Sins Invalid’s founders Patricia Berne, was released in 2013 and detailed the performances’ development, the performers’ thought process behind their parts, and the importance of such a show. 

Sins Invalid features a variety of acts, with some done entirely independently and solely for the performer. In one performance, a disabled man takes a bath and uses a sponge to clean himself. The performance is done entirely alone and independently, which a few of the other more intimate performances do. However, what really stood out to me was the performances that had multiple people in them. One performance features Nomy Lamm, a singer and amputee, dressed in a bird costume in a nest of human prosthetics. She layers her voice to create a song, and is soon joined by another performer who clasps hands with her. The performance is heavily symbolic, and has a huge focus on unity and community. The importance of group performance is emphasised in Keywords for Disabilities, “Performance”, where author Petra Kuppers explains that such performances, “moves out from the individual and towards communal action, and a staged performance becomes a way of presenting disability in public” (138). The final performance featured in the documentary starts with a man in a wheelchair being caught in a fight between a bipedal individual. It is halfway through the performance when this individual disappears and the man in the wheelchair is lifted into the air, using his arms to hold himself atop a wooden beam. The performance ends with the projection of a cross over his form, evoking imagery of crucifixion. This performance is a result of the combined efforts of group and individual performance, and conveys a harrowing connection of abuse and violence on the disabled community. These performances, which we see the behind the scenes of in the documentary, are performed annually, with different stories and performers taking the stage each year. 

“This space[…] is for me” says E. E. Smith. The concise declaration really doesn’t beat around the bush. These spaces, these performances, are one of the few spaces for the diabled to feel fully welcomed and accepted. The in-your-fact descriptions of sex and sexuality, of the instability of their place in an ablist world, the fear or violence and containment, they are not only necessary — to be seen and heard —  but they mirror many of the worldviews that the audience holds. 

There is something powerful in finding yourself surrounded by your community. A magical sort of emotion as you feel true belonging in the face of invisibility and oppression. When you talk to a stranger about your personal experience and realize that you are not alone; they feel what you feel and think what you think. That you no longer have to hide. Much like the audience in Smith’s writing, the audience of Sin’s Invalid would become a part of the performance itself. Not only do you see the unfiltered performances of diabled people, but you are a part of the space itself, with each audience member having their own unknown — and previously unacknowledged — stories.

Sins Invalid emphasises that the performers do not perform for the audience, and rather are performing for themselves, to create art not for it to be objectified by a view, but instead encompassed in the minds and bodies of the artists. Performing for yourself, for the sake of expressing yourself, is an extraordinary way to create art. Artists are often uncomfortably aware of their audience, and this usually impacts the creative process in some way. What will the viewers think of this? Will they accept it? Will they hate it, jeer and boo me off stage? The artist freeing themselves from the expectations put about by the audience are able to focus solely on their art. And for the case of Sins Invalid, this resulted in an enchantingly unashamed show.

It is impossible for film to capture the experience of seeing the live performance. There is so much different about being there in person, seeing the entire expanse of the stage and feeling the entire room vibrate with the voices of the performers, to see the curtains sway open and closed, that cannot be truly captured in film. The act of becoming one with the audience could even itself be a part of the performance. Actors could enter the audience, break the fourth wall, there are even performances entirely made up by the audience. John Cage’s 4’33” is a completely silent musical performance, where the sounds of the auditorium make up the music itself. The audience’s breathing and shuffling, quiet whispers and coughs. Being a part of the audience completely changes the experience, so I feel like as a viewer of the film, I have yet to fully see the true performance. Because of this I give the documentary a four out of five stars.

Middle School Traumas

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There’s a Mathematical Equation That Proves I’m Ugly Or So I Learned in My Seventh-Grade Art Class by Ariel Henley

This essay was about a young girl with Crouzon Syndrome and how she found beauty in herself, even when everyone and everything is telling her otherwise. Her story is focused on her experience in a middle school art class where they learn about the golden ratio that mathematically defines feminine beauty within art. Throughout the class, this girl tries to find a way to be comfortable in her own skin and feel beautiful.

“Beauty is subjective” (46)

“”Fix me””(42)

“I have never understood mathematical equations or ratios, so the only thing I learned from her lesson was that these were the beauty standards a woman must meet if she wanted to be deemed worthy” (41)

I think the main take away for me from this essay is that beauty cannot be defined. It’s subjective to the eye of the beholder and there is beauty in absolutely everything around us. I also really liked that this was about this girl finding beauty and seeing herself as beautiful. I think often in these stories we hear about people dealing with physical deformation problems that end up finding beauty in their personality and they’re inside rather than their outside. I understand how important it is and that what’s on the inside matters but it’s nice to read a story where someone doesn’t give up on their personal appearance and finds beauty in their physical outsides as well.