Dismantling a Dangerous Narrative

 My journalism class is putting together a thematic magazine for their final projects. One group is doing a magazine called "Equality Daily". They will highlight and discuss inequalities towards people of color, women, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community. Pretty amazing, right?!

One section of their magazine is called “What We’re Reading” and they are writing book reviews. I was having a conversation with the group about this and I mentioned that I just read a book about a woman’s experience with having a disability in today’s world. One of the girls said, “Mrs. Laniel! Will you be our guest columnist and give us a book review on that book?” How can you say no to that?! So, I wrote it up and decided that I not only wanted to be featured in their magazine (So dang cute!) but I wanted it to be in this little space on the internet. Enjoy!

Dismantling a Dangerous Narrative

Book Review: by Mrs. Laniel

            An incredible book was recently recommended to me and it is one of those “this is changing my life” sort of books. Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig is a series of memoir essays describing her life in a disabled body. 

            Her experiences illuminate the many ways our society isolates, erases, simplifies “normal”, and silences those in the disability community. She says in her book that she wants to complicate the traditional tropes about what is “normal” and acceptable in our society; not only in how we treat those with disabilities but how we view our privileged, able-bodied selves. The lines around what it means to be disabled, able-bodied, showing kindness, and the reality of accessibility are meant to be blurry, gray lines even though we have been taught that they shouldn’t be. She reminds us that a whole group of people has been marginalized and we have marginalized them because our reaction to disability is learned, not innate. This book helped me understand that we must dismantle the ableism narrative and oppressive culture we have created for those with disabilities. We must add our own complex stories to the over-simplified and non-inclusive narratives that exist.

Another important lesson that I take from this book is how we view kindness. We have been taught over and over that people with disabilities need able bodies to survive. Because of this, we overtly (and often through viral videos) praise the able-bodied “hero”. We must change our selfish outlooks in how we praise the “kind helper” as the heroes of the story because their able bodies helped a disabled body. We instead must put a spotlight on the disabled body and seek to understand their needs and not assume that the able-bodied “heroes” are the only characters in the story.  

While Taussig’s disability is more visible because she uses a wheelchair, her advocacy for those with less visible disabilities is loud and clear. She tells us that we must not perpetuate the idea that every person in a wheelchair should walk in order to be “healed” in order to be valued or deemed successful and a contributor to our society. The pity and lack of understanding we have as a society towards the disabled community is nothing less than criminal. 

Taussig gives voice and language to her readers to advocate for a more inclusive and informed view of disabilities because they affect all of us. Every day. All the time. All of our bodies hold an abundance of strengths and frailties and as she so elegantly stated, sometimes those are one and the same.