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'My body and its place in the world seemed quite normal to me.' ''I didn't grow up disabled, I grew up with a problem. A problem those around me wanted to fix.' 'We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us.' 'The diagnosis helped but it didn't fix everything.' 'Don't fear the labels.' One in five Australians have a disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature. Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, bestselling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt, poetry and graphic art, as well as more than 40 original pieces by writers with a disability or chronic illness. Contributors include Dion Beasley, Astrid Edwards, Jessica Walton, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Gayle Kennedy and El Gibbs.… (meer)
Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the most recent in the Growing Up in Australia series, and like the others, it's illuminating.
My disabilities may limit the length of my life but not its value or its fullness. All lives are marked by grief and joy in equal measure. Nobody loves without suffering and nobody knows gladness without pain. My life is not unique for that, and no more tragic than anyone else’s (at worst a tragicomedy). There are forms of happiness availability to me that I would have never known about if I wasn’t disabled. And I am happier now than ever before. I am living deeply, and fiercely, and without reservation. (Et Lux (also, light), by Robin M. Eames, p.112)
Readers may recall that I reported on an author event about this book in which I mentioned that the book is based on 'the social model of disability.' However, I misrepresented what that is: it means more than including physical, mental and social disability.
'The social model sees "disability" in the result of the interaction between people living with impairments and an environment filled with physical, attitudinal, communication and social barriers. It therefore carries the implication that the physical, attitudinal, communication and social environments must change to enable people living with impairments to participate in society on an equal basis with others.' (People with Disability Australia, cited on p xi.)
One of the most striking examples of this was seen on our televisions when Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John took his place in Federal Parliament. Parliament House in Canberra was opened with great fanfare in 1988, seven years after the International Year of the Disabled in 1981. Senator Steele-John uses a wheelchair.
This is a building that was built in 1988 and at the time they were patting themselves on the back for the number of accessible toilets they put in the public areas. But not a single piece of the working areas of Parliament House was built to be accessible, even by 1988 standards. When a man who used a wheelchair, Graham Edwards, was elected to the House of Representatives, they changed an office for him but nobody thought to change anything on the senate side of the building. Because again the thinking was, 'Oh, that's an anomaly, it will never happen again.' ('You Are Enough' p.80)
As Steele-John says, there's an unwarranted assumption that disability is an aberration, which leads to changes being deferred (or more often, not even thought about) until they have to be implemented.
'My body and its place in the world seemed quite normal to me.' ''I didn't grow up disabled, I grew up with a problem. A problem those around me wanted to fix.' 'We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us.' 'The diagnosis helped but it didn't fix everything.' 'Don't fear the labels.' One in five Australians have a disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature. Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, bestselling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt, poetry and graphic art, as well as more than 40 original pieces by writers with a disability or chronic illness. Contributors include Dion Beasley, Astrid Edwards, Jessica Walton, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Gayle Kennedy and El Gibbs.
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Readers may recall that I reported on an author event about this book in which I mentioned that the book is based on 'the social model of disability.' However, I misrepresented what that is: it means more than including physical, mental and social disability.
One of the most striking examples of this was seen on our televisions when Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John took his place in Federal Parliament. Parliament House in Canberra was opened with great fanfare in 1988, seven years after the International Year of the Disabled in 1981. Senator Steele-John uses a wheelchair.
As Steele-John says, there's an unwarranted assumption that disability is an aberration, which leads to changes being deferred (or more often, not even thought about) until they have to be implemented.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/04/19/growing-up-disabled-in-australia-edited-by-c... (