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chicleeblair's review against another edition
4.0
This book does a good job with intersectionality and bringing new anecdotes and ideas to light, but the language is often problematic. The primary thesis--the changing definition of disability--is sound, but without a grounding in basic disability studies tenants.
More later. Don't think I've ever been so conflicted about a book.
More later. Don't think I've ever been so conflicted about a book.
seeceeread's review against another edition
Good citizens were able and competent in all ways.
The experience of people with disabilities is pivotal to US history, just as the concept of disability is at the core of American citizenship, contested explorations of rights, racial and gender hierarchies, concepts of sexual deviance, economic inequalities, and the process of industrialization.
In this nation, civic participation is intimately tied to one's relationship to capital. Labor and economic productivity are therefore key lenses by which to review disabled people's connection to (or disconnection from) the state over time. Nielsen convincingly links the national political experiment with ableism: Since democracy relies on active, informed, engaged citizens, a variety of definitions and methods have been used to both exclude undesirables from suffrage, and to categorize non-voters (or people targeted for disenfranchisement) as defective. She's also thoughtful about discussing shifting criteria; who's "disabled" on a given day reveals a lot about what the dominant culture fears and projects.
I learned some new things, and always love that from a relevant nonfic read. The section on Ellis Island was particularly interesting to me. Yet having read over half of the other books in the #RevisioningHistory series, this is less crisp, less ambitious, more staid. Nielsen's focus on jobs as a litmus for successful civic inclusion omits social bonds of solidarity, all the delights we lump into "leisure," and the ways that having a job can ... also suck. We learn little of how folks organized - including across categories of disability, geographic location, and status within or beyond institutions. The author downplays disabled love, lust, or lessons from marginalization.
kiracat13's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Some sections of this book I felt could have been much denser and informative, but it was okay as a beginner overview. I far preferred Judith Heumann's memoir, particularly for context and history around the civil rights movement and creation of the ADA
fern_mollett's review
3.0
2.5 really. This is gonna be a rant...
This is an OKAY primer for jumping into US disability history. It's about what you'd expect for hundreds of years' worth of nuanced history squashed into less than 190 pages (which includes a pretty long personal introduction), written by a non-disabled white woman.
As for the content, it was slim. Most of the history written about is through the lens of labor. Even though it's mentioned multiple times in the book that throughout history, disabled people have tried to convince society that they are more than their ability to produce labor, this book focused almost entirely on JOBS. Occasionally, the author would write about specific obstacles the disability community faces, but mostly, she talked about how the disability community banded together so we could get us jobs and prove to society that we weren't worthless.
I would have loved to have read more about social movements, about activists and communities, Crip camps, crawls, clubs, the social lives of historical disabled people and the political lives of those disabled people who fought for the skant few rights that we have today. If these things were mentioned, they were briefly mentioned as a segue to continue talking about our relationships with labor. Disappointing.
Occasionally, we spoke about the intersectionality of disability. How it affects people of color, poor people, people of different faiths, but it certainly didn't maintain that theme throughout, ya know? Like it was a paragraph or two thrown into a few chapters.
It was really disappointing that the only talk of Indigenous people's was of those of the pre-colonial past, not of the modern (and totally still alive and existing) Indigenous peoples. Not even mentioning that the modern disability rate of Indigenous peoples is higher than average. The same went for Black people, most of what is mentioned about them is talking about the enslaved! How they were worth less if they were disabled. Like, really? Like the only context she has for black and brown people is talking about them like theyre either ancient/extinct, or from when they were enslaved!? There is no mention of how disability DRASTICALLY affects Indigenous and Black folks different compared to white.
I think what really would have helped this book would be to organize it by topic rather than chronologically. That way multiple important themes could have been addressed. And to address those topics thru a lense of intersectionality.
- The legal definition of disabled and how it changed over time.
- Disability & labor (the industrial revolution & how it disabled people)
- How disabled war veterans were treated and how that changed over time and maybe why?
- Important laws.
- Popular activists and activist groups, and the mainstream activist groups that helped ours (like the Black Panthers).
- brief history of institutionalization & the effects of deinstitutionalization.
- accessibility and a brief history of assistive tech (prosthetics, wheelchairs, etc)
I think if the book was broken down in this way, we could have covered a lot more and as a reader learned a lot more about our disability history without reducing us the "the obstacles faced when it was time to prove we werent worthless in the eyes of capitalism".
This is an OKAY primer for jumping into US disability history. It's about what you'd expect for hundreds of years' worth of nuanced history squashed into less than 190 pages (which includes a pretty long personal introduction), written by a non-disabled white woman.
As for the content, it was slim. Most of the history written about is through the lens of labor. Even though it's mentioned multiple times in the book that throughout history, disabled people have tried to convince society that they are more than their ability to produce labor, this book focused almost entirely on JOBS. Occasionally, the author would write about specific obstacles the disability community faces, but mostly, she talked about how the disability community banded together so we could get us jobs and prove to society that we weren't worthless.
I would have loved to have read more about social movements, about activists and communities, Crip camps, crawls, clubs, the social lives of historical disabled people and the political lives of those disabled people who fought for the skant few rights that we have today. If these things were mentioned, they were briefly mentioned as a segue to continue talking about our relationships with labor. Disappointing.
Occasionally, we spoke about the intersectionality of disability. How it affects people of color, poor people, people of different faiths, but it certainly didn't maintain that theme throughout, ya know? Like it was a paragraph or two thrown into a few chapters.
It was really disappointing that the only talk of Indigenous people's was of those of the pre-colonial past, not of the modern (and totally still alive and existing) Indigenous peoples. Not even mentioning that the modern disability rate of Indigenous peoples is higher than average. The same went for Black people, most of what is mentioned about them is talking about the enslaved! How they were worth less if they were disabled. Like, really? Like the only context she has for black and brown people is talking about them like theyre either ancient/extinct, or from when they were enslaved!? There is no mention of how disability DRASTICALLY affects Indigenous and Black folks different compared to white.
I think what really would have helped this book would be to organize it by topic rather than chronologically. That way multiple important themes could have been addressed. And to address those topics thru a lense of intersectionality.
- The legal definition of disabled and how it changed over time.
- Disability & labor (the industrial revolution & how it disabled people)
- How disabled war veterans were treated and how that changed over time and maybe why?
- Important laws.
- Popular activists and activist groups, and the mainstream activist groups that helped ours (like the Black Panthers).
- brief history of institutionalization & the effects of deinstitutionalization.
- accessibility and a brief history of assistive tech (prosthetics, wheelchairs, etc)
I think if the book was broken down in this way, we could have covered a lot more and as a reader learned a lot more about our disability history without reducing us the "the obstacles faced when it was time to prove we werent worthless in the eyes of capitalism".
mlareads's review
3.0
Generally speaking this book serves as a good introduction to anyone looking to learn more about disability history. I will say it is very labor focused and there is little on disability culture. The Capitol crawl is not mentioned which is a bit disappointing. Still it was very interesting and I do recommend it! I will definitely be looking for other books to expand my knowledge