Disability Pride

Disability Pride by Ben Mattlin was a book that I downloaded from Edelweiss, which provides digital copies of books in advance of publication.  Mattlin's book is scheduled to be published in November 2022.  I feel privileged to have read it early.

 

  My review of Disability Pride appears below.

                                      

 

 I have written on disability topics previously on this blog.  Most of my focus in this area has been given to books dealing with deafness or deaf issues.  This was due to my co-blogger relationship with deaf author and fashionista, Tara Chevrestt. 

(Update on Tara: Tara is now primarily blogging about fashion at  Pin Up Gals , and I have re-shaped what was originally her blog called Book Babe as a blog dealing with books centering on strong female protagonists called Flying High Reviews.) 

 If you would like to see my posts about books dealing with disability see my review of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction (which is a sarcastic title) here, my review of a novel about a mute woman protagonist here, my review of a novel taking place at a deaf boys' school in the UK here, my review of a novel about a 15th century non-disabled Jewish woman with a deaf father here, and my review of Inside Deaf Culture here.

The author of Disability Pride, Ben Mattlin, was born with spinal muscular atrophy.  He couldn't sit himself up as a baby, and he has never stood or walked.  It's a progressive disease which means his condition is worsening. Yet he is married, and they have two daughters in their twenties.

As a former New York resident I was interested to learn that there are only 124 subway stations that are accessible for disabled passengers.  There are a total of 472 subway stations.  In 2020 a federal judge ruled that the New York MTA must add elevators to every station that is renovated.   The MTA  hopes to make 70 more stations ADA accessible by 2024.

 The next issue that I need to discuss in the context of this review is support animals that are not allowed in the cabin during a plane trip.  This is supposed to be considered discrimination.   Airlines do allow animals that are small enough to sit on a passenger's lap or under the seat.  If they are too large to do either of those, I suspect it's probably a safety issue rather than discrimination. When food and drinks aren't being served, aisles must be kept clear in case of an emergency. I think that's common sense. 

This book mentions a 19th century individual with a disability who I think should be celebrated.  He is Thomas Wiggins, a blind man who toured performing music he himself had composed. Wiggins was invited to the White House to perform for President James Buchanan. I found a page on the Black Past website devoted to Thomas Wiggins here.

I also recently saw opera singer Andrea Bocelli perform on television and didn't realize that he was blind.  If I were a fan of Bocelli who followed his career, I probably would have. Although I enjoy opera, I admit that the performers whose careers I do follow are singers of either folk songs or popular music. 

I was shocked to learn from Disability Pride that in the 19th century it was illegal for disabled people to appear in public in San Francisco.  There were other cities where this was also a crime.  Chicago kept the law against disabled people on the streets longest.  It was enacted in 1881 and repealed in 1974.  Most disabled people were beggars which was considered a disturbance of the peace. People were actually arrested for the crime of being disabled and appearing in public!

Neurodiversity was coined in 1988 by an autistic Australian graduate student named Judy Singer.  It was derived from the term "biodiversity" .

According to the CDC, one in 59 Americans is autistic.  By the way, I had to figure out that Mattlin meant the CDC.  Sometimes this author's meaning needs to be deciphered.  He has a highly individual way of expressing himself.

I learned from this book that Greta Thunberg is autistic.  The author comments that idolizing famous autists like Thunberg is a distraction from normalizing neurodiversity.  Excuse me, I admire Thunberg for what she has done as a climate activist.  I imagine there are a great many people who don't know that she's an autist.  It seems to me that focus on Thunberg  probably doesn't impact the cause of normalizing neurodiversity one way or another.  But that's just me.

I would like to bring up a piece of litigation that was discussed in Disability Pride.  In 1995 two institutionalized women with disabilities sued the state of Georgia to receive treatment at home.  The primary plaintiff was Lois Curtis, an autistic Black woman.  Their doctors agreed that they would be able to live at home if they had the support to do so.  The state denied them, but it was appealed to the Supreme Court by Georgia's Commissioner of Human Resources, Thomas Olmstead.   The case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion which stated that people who needed treatment for mental illness that could be treated in a community setting, should be allowed to live in the community if that is their preference. Such individuals could not be institutionalized against their will.  I found a page from The Arc, an advocacy and education organization for disabled individuals, that honored Lois Curtis this past February in the context of Black History Month here .  I hope that Lois Curtis continues to be remembered as a pivotal figure in the struggle for the rights of disabled people.  

Although my notes on this book took up half a book journal volume, I've already included all the comments that were substantive.  I thought this was an interesting and insightful book, though as I've mentioned I sometimes had a hard time figuring out what Mattlin intended to say.

             

                                  

Forever Past: Volume 3 in a Claire Clairmont Mystery Trilogy

Like the first two volumes in this trilogy dealing with the life of Claire Clairmont, I was requested to review this one by the publicist who is now MaryGlenn M. Warnock. Warnock mailed me a hardcover copy which I began reading on June 10, setting aside the book I was reading at the time.                                         

 For background on Claire Clairmont see my reviews of the previous two books in the trilogy.  My review of Claire's Last Secret can be found here , and my review of A Shadowed Fate is here.  

When I wrote the original version of this review, there was no cover for  Forever Past and the page for the novel on Goodreads was incomplete.  There is now a cover for this book which I am adding below.  

                                   

                                

Claire in continuing to try to discover what happened to her daughter, Allegra, whose father was the poet Lord Byron.  Byron was his title.  His actual name was George Gordon.  (See the Wikipedia article on Lord Byron here.) He recognized Allegra as his daughter.  So it seems to me that her name would have been Allegra Gordon.

Setting the issue of what her name should be aside, Byron was trying to protect Allegra from assassination due to her being his daughter.  He himself was continually dealing with such threats.  Her life would be safe if no one knew where she was.    

Byron's involvement in a radical secret society would seem likely to have been the reason behind the assassination threats.  Certainly, keeping Allegra far from his political activities would have had a protective effect. 

The thriller aspect of this book eventually comes to a climax.  Some readers would have found those developments surprising.  I was briefly surprised, but current politics caused me to realize that I shouldn't have been astonished at all. 

There was a happy ending for Claire in this novel. There had not been a happy ending for her in real life.  I did think that the alternate events described in this book were possible. I like happy endings when they aren't completely beyond the realm of possibility.   So I thought Forever Past  was credible.  I gave it a B.

                                  

                                  

The Hidden One--A Contemporary Amish Mystery

 The Hidden One is the 14th book in the Kate Burkholder  mystery series by Linda Castillo. Kate Burkholder is a Chief of Police  with an Amish background.  She had left the Amish community some time ago, but still has connections there. I have never read any other book in this series, but I did review another novel focused on an Amish protagonist.  It was Her Fear, a romantic suspense novel by Shelley Shepard Gray.  See my review of Her Fear here if you are inclined to do so.  I received a copy of The Hidden One from the publisher via Net Galley.

                               

We learn that Kate's significant other, John Tomasetti,works for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.  I was curious so I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.  I discovered something about its history that sounded very inappropriate to me.  It was founded in 1921 as a record keeping facility, and convicts maintained the records.  This meant they could potentially change their own records or even make sure they disappeared.  Why didn't this occur to those in charge?  It really sounds bizarre to me.  I guess that this is another example of fact being stranger than fiction.

Kate has been asked to investigate the murder of an Amish bishop.  A member of the Amish community is being held by the police because his hunting gun was found at the crime scene.  His name is Jonas Bowman.   The elders don't believe that Jonas could have committed this crime.  Kate doesn't believe it either.  She and Jonas were close when they were teens.

The police had arrested Jonas because he had accused the victim, Ananias, of having caused his father's death by heart attack.  They argued very publicly.  Jonas actually threatened Ananias. Then Jonas damaged Ananias' buggy and Ananias called the police.  Two months later Ananias died.  Jonas admitted that the murder weapon was his though he hadn't seen it for years.  He said that he just lost track of it.  He certainly looked like a likely suspect. On the other hand, the gun was kept right near the door.  Anyone who knew that could have come in and taken it. 

One of the characters belongs to a sub-sect called the Byler Amish.  They have bright yellow topped buggies.  I found a photo of a yellow topped buggy on Wikipedia that was from Belleville, Pennsylvania where this novel takes place. So I decided to include it in this review below.

                               

There are mentions of certain characters who have a "funny accent" when they speak the Amish language, Deitsch.  Such differences in speech play an important role in the plot of The Hidden One. 

According to a Wikipedia article on the Pennsylvania Dutch language, most Amish settlers originally came from a region of Germany called the Palatinate.  The Wikipedia article goes on to say that modern Germans who come from that region will be able to make themselves understood to the Amish in a limited way.  Yet, it may cause the Amish to think that they speak Deitsch strangely.

The Hidden One took longer for me to read and review than expected. I have been distracted lately.  I hope to be more focused on reading and reviewing going forward.

 

                                     

How to Raise an Antiracist

I'm having problems finding time to read and finish books lately.  One of the problems is that my transit time is so brief .  In the past, I used to while away my time on buses and trains reading.  Now I reach my destination before I've even finished a chapter.  Another problem is being drawn into TV news at home.  There's so much going on that's really important, but I don't discuss current events in my reviews unless they're relevant to the book.  So let's get on to the review.  I received a copy of How To Raise An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi  from the publisher via Net Galley.

                            

 

 I had never read a book by this critically acclaimed author though I did read an essay by him in The 1619 Project which I reviewed here .  Kendi intended this book for parents.  I need to tell readers that I'm not a parent, but I am interested in antiracism.  

Kendi points out that to do nothing about racism means that you are upholding it.  I haven't done nothing, but I can't say I've done very much.  The publisher sent this book to me because I reviewed  The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee  here back in February of 2021.  I've also taken an anti-racist perspective in a couple of reviews I've written since then.  Yet I am not an activist. I don't feel I can pat myself on the back for writing reviews. I should do more.

In some ways this was too personal a book for me to review.  My book journal notes contain many specific references to my upbringing in response to Kendi's discussion of raising childen. I don't feel it's appropriate to include such comments in a published review.

Kendi's mention of his high school, John Bowne High School in Queens, caused me to research 17th century Quaker, John Bowne. I drew on Wikipedia and a Quaker site  called  A History of Flushing Meeting. 

John Bowne was arrested by Peter Stuysvesant in 1662 for allowing Quaker meetings in his home. The Dutch Reformed Church was the established religion in what was then Dutch ruled New Amsterdam.  It didn't become New York until the English took over in 1664.

John Bowne appealed to the Dutch West India Company which was the ultimate authority in the colony. He asked them to overrule Stuyvesant and enforce the 1645 Flushing Charter of Religious Freedom. Quakers had complained in 1645 that they should have freedom of conscience.  This was called the Flushing Remonstrance which resulted in the Flushing Charter of Religious Freedom.  The Dutch West India Company responded that "the consciences of men at least ought ever to remain free and unshackled".  

The last few paragraphs represent a detour from the primary theme of How To Raise an Antiracist.  Readers need to realize that John Bowne owned slaves. He was not the only Quaker who did own slaves.  See my review of Slavery and the Meetinghouse, a book dealing with 19th century Quakers and slavery here.  Caring about your own religious freedom doesn't mean that you necessarily care about whether other human beings are enslaved.

So Kendi mentions that when his parents moved to Virginia, he ended up attending Stonewall Jackson High School. Kendi said that it was named as "a middle finger to the civil rights movement".  

At that point, I wanted to know when the civil rights movement really began.  I wasn't taught anything about the civil rights movement until the 7th grade, and then it was about beliefs and principles rather than events.   I found a Civil Rights Movement Timeline and was astonished to find that the first event listed was in 1948.  Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the U.S. military. 

Kendi cites research that says that people who grow up in White neighborhoods and attend White schools, are apt to think that when things go missing, someone Black must have stolen them.  There was an incident of theft in my junior high school which was a Jewish day school.  There were no Black people to suspect, so no one thought that someone Black was guilty of the theft.  I discovered that the missing items were in my school bag and immediately reported it.  I thought that someone was trying to cause me to be considered a thief.  I never discovered who had put the items in my bag.

I want to tell you about a discovery of racism's impact that I made as an adult.  I moved into a neighborhood that I was told had been redlined.  I knew that redlining meant that property there was considered a poor investment.  I also knew that it was a Black neighborhood.  It was a neighborhood of well maintained private homes, but it was redlined.  I didn't know that it was redlined because it was a Black neighborhood. Since I was renting a room, the house's value didn't impact me.  Yet when I found out the truth about redlining, I was angry that racism was the reason why my friends, who bought the house, owned a property with less value. I considered this injustice.  It occurs to me now that redlining discourages integration.  If White people knew that buying a house in an integrated neighborhood would mean that their home would have less value, they might prefer a Whites only neighborhood even if they themselves weren't racist.

Kendi mentions parent Elana Yaron Fishbein's complaint about current education being indoctrination.  Kendi thinks that education has always been indoctrination. It bothered him that Fishbein went on Tucker Carlson's show complaining about being "lynched".  Kendi pointed out that if she actually had been lynched, she wouldn't be alive to complain about it.  Of course Fishbein was using "lynching" as a metaphor.  Kendi is sensitive to that metaphor because of all the Black men who have actually been lynched.  I'm sensitive to the use of the word "holocaust" as a metaphor for historical erasure.  That's because I had relatives who were killed by the Nazis.

 Use metaphors wisely.  Everyone has their sensitivities.  It's better to be considerate than inconsiderate.

I had the experience of witnessing an assault on someone I knew for reasons of prejudice.  This wasn't racial prejudice.  I was involved in an amateur summer theater group.  All the performers in the group were White.  A local gang attacked one of the stars in the show.  The members of this gang were White, but they didn't like outsiders in their neighborhood.  The theater had brought all these outsiders and they wanted it gone.  The victim of the attack was badly injured and had to go to a hospital.  If I had not already believed that prejudice was wrong, I would certainly have been convinced by this incident.  My feeling was that attacking someone who had never done anything to you is unjust.  I had been brought up to believe in justice.  A just society should be an antiracist society.  

 Imani, Kendi's daughter, wanted to wear bandages when Kendi came back from the hospital wearing bandages. I figured that this was Imani's approach to empathy.  Imani must have realized that feeling badly for Daddy because he was wearing bandages, wasn't enough.  She was right about that, but wearing bandages when she wasn't hurt, isn't a useful response.  It's cute, but it isn't useful.  A better response would be asking what Daddy would need help with.  That would have been the way my brother, who grew up to be a physician, would have responded to a parent coming home from the hospital.  My approach is to help people when they ask for help.  In my experience, people don't always want help with things.  

This discussion is relevant because Kendi believes that antiracism is based in empathy.  It's like the Jewish dictum "Do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you."  Note that it's phrased in the negative.  It's about avoiding harm.  It's a statement that you would be able to identify harm by having a sense of empathy.  Yet empathy isn't the only factor in avoiding harm.   People have differences.  You need to know these differences.  They may want things that you don't, and stay away from things that you actively pursue.  If avoiding harm is your standard for action, then antiracism isn't sufficient as a guiding principle.   I suspect that antiracism is only a beginning in avoiding harm to people of races other than your own.  

Kendi mentions that Black immigrant children were often diagnosed with learning disabilities when what they really needed was an English as a Second Language class.  That must be very frustrating.  In fact, I've seen non-English speaking immigrants being treated as if they were hard of hearing.  Those who speak English exclusively sometimes seem to think that if they repeat what they said in English louder, they will be understood.  Maybe they don't know what else to do.  Well, you can always start by pointing at things and saying what it's called in English.  You might then learn what it's called in another language.  That would be a start in communication.  Yet you probably won't even try to communicate unless you are antiracist, recognizing the humanity of someone of another race.  So antiracism is a prerequisite to opening a doorway to the world of a person of color.  You might be surprised to find that you also have common ground.

                                   

                                       

                 

How Civil Wars Start

 How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter opens with a group of insurrectionists in Michigan planning to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer had been the subject of a kidnapping plot by a militia group calling themselves the Wolverine Watchmen.  I found out about this group from a Newsweek article that is referenced in the  Wolverine Watchmen link.  

By the way, Michigan, the home of the Wolverine Watchmen, is the state with the highest number of militia groups.  Having the highest number of militia groups is not a goal that any state should aspire to achieve.

                             

                                

It's been a couple of weeks since I read  How Civil Wars Start.   I knew that it would be a time consuming review to write.  I learned a great deal from this book--including that a country in the middle zone between democracy and autocracy is called an anocracy.

Athens, Greece is still often called "the cradle of democracy", but the patricians of the ancient Athenian upper class were more like an oligarchy.  Oligarchy means rule by a faction.  Both ancient and modern democracies have been divided by factions.  Factions can be corrosive for democracies.  I wouldn't recommend factionalization as a good strategy for a healthy democracy. 

Author Barbara F. Walter discusses ratings for countries.  Full democracies have a  +10 rating.  Full autocracies have a -10 rating.  Anocracies, in the middle ground, have ratings between -5 and +5.

The U.S. is considered a partial democracy because the right to vote has been limited in a number of states.  A partial democracy is vulnerable to civil war. The 19th century U.S. Civil War happened because we were a factionalized anocracy with a faction excluded from power--the Confederate South.  

As I went through my notes on this book, I discovered a reference to the Republic of Mindanao and Sulu.  Sulu wouldn't be the Star Trek Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu from the original series.  It would probably be the Sulu archipelago, a chain of islands in the southwestern Phillipines.

Walter explained how the last South African President of the apartheid era, F. W. de Klerk, avoided civil war by negotiating with Mandela.  It seems to me that if South Africa could do that, so could we.  After all, the U.S. isn't as close to the precipice of civil war as South Africa was then.