midterm - march 20

Question 1

Disability visibility intro

Answer 1

Author: Alice Wong
genre: essay
explains the reason behind her book and wanting to properly represent different disabilities and perspectives

Question 2

Unspeakable Conversation

Answer 2

writer: Harriet McBryde Johnson
genre: essay
disability: scoliosis and muscle wasting disease.
characters: Harriet Johnson and Dr. Singer
story: a conversation about post-birth murder for disabled babies. Singer spends too much time telling Johnson parents should be able to kill their children and that it is no different than abortion. Johnson partakes in the dialogue and tries to rebuttal his arguments.

Question 3

Good country people

Answer 3

author: Flannery O’Connor (lupus, catholic, loved writing this)
genre: gothic short story
disability: limb difference and leg prosthetic
characters: joy/hulga, Mrs. freedman, Mrs. Hopewell, Manly Pointer
story summary: joy has an amputated leg and has become very angry. she is a lawyer who still lives with her mother. manly comes trying to sell bibles and takes an interest in Joy. at the end of the story, we see that this interest is not an interest but a hobby manly have which is taking advantage of disabled people.

Question 4

Cathedral

Answer 4

author: Raymond Carver
Genre: realism short story
disability: blindness
characters: narrator, narrator’s wife, Robert
story: the narrator’s wife has a friend, Robert, who is blind, come and visit them. the narrator has tons of negative and wrong stereotypes about blindness and the way it affects people. we see the narrator come to Robert with a very hostile attitude, but at the end of the story, we see the narrator grow in understanding of Robert as he helps Robert draw and describe a cathedral.

Question 5

“deafblind poet” and “the Rubbtel”

Answer 5

author: John Lee Clark (deafblind poet, essayist, and scholar)
genre: poem and erasure poem
disability: deafblind
summary: deafblind poet speaks of the different things a deafblind poet can do. it speaks of the way the are no different in the things they can do and they are a value to society.

Question 6

“Guide dogs don’t lead people. We wander as one.”

Answer 6

Author: Haben Girma
Genre: Essay
disability: blindness
characters: Haben and her dog Mylo
story: dogs are an aid and give confidence but do not lead. they don’t know where the person wants to go and will not pull them. they are merely there to help keep them safe and give them confidence when exploring.

Question 7

“When you are waiting to be healed”

Answer 7

Author: June Eric-Udorie
Genre: Essay
disability: blindness: congenital idiopathic nystagmus
characters: June
story: June spends her whole life waiting to be healed from her visual impairment. the church is always treating her as though she is broken and it takes moving away from the church to feel the freedom of accepting and loving herself and body for what it is

Question 8

How a blind man astronomer found a way to hear the stars”

Answer 8

author: Wanda Diaz-Merced
genre: TED talk
disability: blindness
characters: Wanda
story: after illness blindness occurred for Wanda and she could no longer work with start and light like she used to. with some collaboration, she was able to translate lights into a visual plot ad then into a sound called sonification.

Question 9

“how to make a paper plane from rage”

Answer 9

author: Elsa Sjunneson
genre: essay
disability: blindness
characters: Elsa
story: the story goes back and forth with Elsa explaining her journey as a blind woman and how others have hurt her. as she goes through the story she pauses and puts her anger into the next steps of a paper crane.

Question 10

“tell-tale heart”

Answer 10

author: Edgar Allan Poe (likely had depression, fascinated with the mental state of his characters, orphan, inventor of the modern detective story.)
genre: gothic
disability: madness
Characters: the narrator and the old man
story: the narrator is a madman who is bothered by the eye of an old man. though the course of the story we see the narrator watch the old man in his sleep every night for weeks until one night he kills him and hides him in the floorboards. when people come to visit the house he feels the “heart beating” from the floor and tells the visitors about the body.

Question 11

“The Yellow Wallpaper”

Answer 11

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman (struggled with postpartum depression, concerned about social inequality and women’s rights)
genre: gothic short story
disability: postpartum depression
characters: the narrator and her wife John
story: narrator struggles with postpartum depression and to help her husband, who is a physician, temporarily mover her. at this new house, she is put in a room and told to rest. she is not allowed to write or go outside. the story shows her lack of a good mental state and the ways her husband’s treatments are not helping her but causing her to dissociate and go mad.

Question 12

“Alzheimer’s Noir”

Answer 12

Author: Floy Skloot
Genre: Noir
disability: Alzheimer
character: narrator, Dorthey, jimmy
story: the narrator, who has Alzheimer’s, lives in a state where he thinks he is still caring for his wife with Alzheimer’s and so he goes out looking for her. while looking for her he has memories of her and keeps changing from thinking it’s real to knowing it’s a memory. he finds his son and tries to convince him to help him look.

Question 13

“The Absolute True Diary or a part-time Indian”

Answer 13

Author: Sherman Alexie (hydrocephalus, Native American)
Genre: diary short story
Disability: Hydrocephalus
Character: Junior, Penelope, Jr father
Story: junior, also known as Arnold, changes schools to go to Reardan Highschool, but struggles with feeling insecure due to his disability and the way he looks. there is also a lot of cultural difference between the farm kids in Reardan and the upbringing of a native American and because of that is added to Juniors’ conflict when starting t a new school and feeling like he fits in.

Question 14

“Before the ever after”

Answer 14

Author: Jaqueline Woodson
Genre: Free verse poetry
Disability: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Characters: ZJ, Zachariah, ZJ’s mom, Ollie
Story: Personal narrative of ZJ witnessing his father decline from CTE. he goes back and forth from the present to the memories ZJ has with his dad playing football or music. we see how important their relationship was to ZJ and the ways CTE is changing and damaging it. As a way of coping ZJ spends a lot of time with his friends as well as playing music.

Question 15

What is the ADA?

Answer 15

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. It defines a person with a disability as a
person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life
activities. Under this act, it is illegal to discriminate against a person with a disability in all areas of
public life such as a job, in public spaces, schools, transportation, etc.

Question 16

what is the medical model of disability?

Answer 16

This disability is a ‘problem’ in their body that needs to be fixed or managed by medicine and science in order to live a ‘normal’ life.
In this model, imperfections are understood as abnormalities that need to be improved or fixed by medicine.
The phrase “able-bodied” is, although commonly used today, also derived from the Medical Model

Question 17

What is the social model of disability?

Answer 17

A person is disabled by society’s placing of barriers to different types of access in all facets of civil and social life through attitudes, the physical environment, and institutional norms.
Social model language: disabled person, inclusion, enabled, impairments, access requirements, Disabled.
If the medical model positioned being disabled as in opposition to being abled, the social model puts it in opposition to being enabled. In other words, non-disabled people are enabled by society and those with impairments are disabled by society.

Question 18

“extraordinary Bodies” disability in culture

Answer 18

Disability, then, is the attribution of corporal deviance—not so much a property of bodies
as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do. Disability should be thought of as nothing different than someone’s sexuality or race.
culture views disabled bodies as inferior

Question 19

“extraordinary Bodies” disability in literature

Answer 19

disabled charters in literature are not normal for the main characters and are usually given the interpretation as “exotic”
literature shapes our outlook on reality and using such strong stereotypes in media is damaging to our outlook on the disabled
in literature, we like to point out the difference and not give the characters anything to make them more than their disability
those that are considered disabled are not given anything considered “normal”

Question 20

“extraordinary Bodies” representation and reality

Answer 20

disabled people need to be the one to help reduce the awkwardness in situations and social interactions
if we normalize too much we don’t take into account the needs they do have
how a disability is acquired changes how you look at it

Question 21

takeaways from the “narrative prosthesis” by David Mitchel and Sharon Snyder

Answer 21

disability pervades the literary narrative, first, as a stock feature of characterization
and, second, as an opportunistic metaphorical device. this idea is called the narrative prosthesis.
“narrative prosthesis is meant to indicate that disability has been used throughout
history as a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive
potentiality, and analytical insight
disability shows up in literature in two ways: 1) as an easy go-to way to quickly create
and describe a character and 2) as a metaphor for something else (materiality of a metaphor)