“Nurturing Black Disabled Joy” by Keah Brown

Summary:

This piece begins with the author Keah Brown explaining how the book she wrote “The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love with Me” elicited far more negatives reactions than it was due, as a book about hope, inclusion, equal rights, and joy. She states that most of the people who sent her hate mail were people who were mad that the story was about someone whom they felt they couldn’t relate to as white people, even if they too were disabled. Brown details that media typically portrays disabled people as white men instead of people with intersectional identities and the hashtag she created, #DisabledAndCute, was a way for her to show her joy as someone who is a black, disabled woman. She says that she doesn’t expect herself or anyone else to always be happy, but knows that finding “small pockets of joy” as often as possible.

Quotes:

“When I created #DisabledAndCute in 2017, I did so to capture a moment, a moment of trust in myself to keep choosing joy every single day” (Wong, 118).

“I was once a very self-deprecating and angry person who scoffed at the idea of happiness and believed that I would die before I ever saw a day where I felt excited at the prospect of being alive” (Wong, 119).

Reflection:

I had never heard of the hashtag #DisabledAndCute until I read this piece and so I looked it up online and really enjoyed reading more Keah Brown’s intentions with the hashtag. I read a quote where she explains that oftentimes when disabled people are called cute, it is from nondisabled people who are infantilizing people with disabilities, whether they mean to or not. By calling herself cute, she is working to take ownership of how people with disabilities are represented, because its giving a platform for people to represent themselves rather than other people doing it. A quote from this reading I really appreciated was her words on how she used to be a very self-deprecating and angry person but realized one day that that sort of mentality and outlook on life wasn’t worth it and started redirecting her negative thoughts into productive and positive ones. I liked this because I think its very true that in order to stop utilizing a negative mentality, a person has to use that energy towards something else or else they can never break out of the cycle.