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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
This is a solid introductory read for those seeking to learn more about the history of sickness and disability in the United States. Nielsen takes care to expand the narrative to include the experiences of Native Americans, enslaved Africans, African Americans, Asian immigrants, and Asian Americans. The book is about 185 pages of content and it's a lot to fit in, so most sections stay at a cursory level. Still, Nielsen takes the time to present short vignettes in each section about the lived experiences of individuals. Certainly worth a read to familiarize one's self with the timeline.
A Disability History of the United States by Kim E Nielsen is a condensed book on the topic of disability in the US from before European nations invaded through to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. To be clear, this book is not exhaustive nor focused on specific disabilities. Rather, it follows how the notion and definition of disability changed in the US over time and how that affected people put into that category. As time went on, it also includes how people put into that category begin to redefine the category themselves and what it means to be disabled.
This is not so much a history of disabilities, but, as the title states, a disability history. That being said, I can see how many people could assume the former. The content itself is spread out in chronological order and only takes up 180ish pages, which should inform you of the brevity on the topic. This, coupled an accessible writing style (not academic) makes it a great introduction on the topic of disability perceptions.
This is not so much a history of disabilities, but, as the title states, a disability history. That being said, I can see how many people could assume the former. The content itself is spread out in chronological order and only takes up 180ish pages, which should inform you of the brevity on the topic. This, coupled an accessible writing style (not academic) makes it a great introduction on the topic of disability perceptions.
a broad overview of the history of disability in the united states which reveals the malleability of this category & how it has been employed as a tool for exclusion & oppression, similar to & intersecting with other socially constructed categories such as race, gender, & class. disability has been a means of justifying the exclusion of those deemed to be "unfit" and who falls in and out of that category over time points out the need for questioning & critiquing the category itself. while reading, i wondered how a book could be written about such a broad category of 'disability' which encompasses both physical, mental, & cognitive disabilities, but i realize that this was done with intention to reject the internal hierarchy of acceptable/unacceptable disabilities and to reflect the politics of cross-disability rights organizations that drew upon shared experiences of discrimination & exclusion to fight for their rights.
the writing itself is clear and only sometimes veers into being too granular (but less so than other history books, in my opinion). the author utilizes the specific narratives of individuals' lives in each chapter which humanizes this huge archive of disabled history. i especially appreciated the author's intentionality in pointing out race, class, and gender and how each intersects with disability. i was worried going in that a 'disability history' would unintentionally mean a (white, rich, male) disability history, but i was gladly proven wrong. this is a resource that i will continuously return to throughout my teaching.
after reading some other reviews & reflecting, i also want to challenge the ending/conclusion of the book as thinking about the inclusion of disabled people into the united states & making it "home". this itself is a settler colonial claim, and i would be interested in reading more about anti-settler colonial understandings of disability & dismantling the structures that create/sustain disability in the first place.
the writing itself is clear and only sometimes veers into being too granular (but less so than other history books, in my opinion). the author utilizes the specific narratives of individuals' lives in each chapter which humanizes this huge archive of disabled history. i especially appreciated the author's intentionality in pointing out race, class, and gender and how each intersects with disability. i was worried going in that a 'disability history' would unintentionally mean a (white, rich, male) disability history, but i was gladly proven wrong. this is a resource that i will continuously return to throughout my teaching.
after reading some other reviews & reflecting, i also want to challenge the ending/conclusion of the book as thinking about the inclusion of disabled people into the united states & making it "home". this itself is a settler colonial claim, and i would be interested in reading more about anti-settler colonial understandings of disability & dismantling the structures that create/sustain disability in the first place.
informative
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I really enjoyed the content of this book, but the writing style very nearly made me DNF it. It reminded me of proofreading a college essay. It was presented as a list of information rather than engaging writing, which made the fascinating content difficult to get through.
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.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
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.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
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
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".