Home Bound: Growing Up with a Disability in America, and: Women with Disabilities Aging Well, and: (Dis)embodied Form (review)

Historically, disabled women have been largely absent from activist and academic discourses within disability studies (which is mostly male-centered) and feminist theory (which is mostly focused on able-bodied people), as well as from revolutionary circles in general. We have been spoken about and talked at but were seldom a part of the conversation. In the late 1980s, however, a small band of authors, academics, and artists began to give a voice to our special and particular concerns, experiences, and strengths. Today, even though we are still often overlooked, dismissed, and pitied by both our fellow feminists and our brothers with disabilities, disabled women are no longer mute in either arena. The three books and four authors I am reviewing each seek to add volume to disabled women's collective demand to be heard.

Home Bound: Growing Up with a Disability in America is an autobiographical memoir recounting the trials, tribulations, and eventual "radicalization" of the author Cass Irvin. The book's five chapters are in loose chronological order, featuring several flashbacks. In the first chapter, readers learn about Irvin's family history and station, as well her own quiet, isolated, slightly abusive, somewhat privileged experience as a child with polio in the South during the 1950s and early 1960s. Irvin speaks eloquently about the subtle and not so subtle messages that disabled children receive regarding personal care provision, as well as providing insight into the education of disabled children before the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which mandated free and appropriate public education for all disabled students.

When I was ten years old, my sister, Ann, told me that the reason Mom drank so much was because she had to take care of me. . . . My aunts complimented me on the fact that I never complained, never felt sorry for myself; I was praised for having adjusted to my handicap. And so I learned that people like you better when you make few demands on them.

Finally, in my senior year I got to go to school all day (actually four hours a day, because that's all the credits I needed).

(5-6)

As they move forward through her narrative, readers discover the complexities, incongruities, and circularity of her existence. We notice the double-edged sword of her relationship with the Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center, which both freed and isolated her at once. As she grows into adulthood, readers will find their own lives reflected in her struggles for independence, acceptance, and love.

No radical tale of the 1960s could be told without exploring the contributions of the civil rights movement and the struggle for women's liberation. While Irvin rightly critiques these movements for their lack of access, she is careful to acknowledge their importance in her own political coming of age. While narrative on sexual orientation is lacking, readers cannot miss the connections she draws between ableism, sexism, and racism.

I would recommend this book for introductory classes in Women Studies or disability studies. It would also be a unique addition to the reading list for a course in memoir, whether feminist or not. Because it reads like a novel, I would also suggest it for courses taken by students just
transitioning from high school to college.

Women with Disabilities Aging Well by Patricia Noonan Walsh and Barbara LeRoy reports on an exciting cross-continent project that gathered the personal narratives of 167 women with intellectual disabilities and used them to inform policy recommendations in regards to services for that population. Women from eighteen countries, ranging in age from 40 to 71 and up, were interviewed about subjects ranging from economic independence to...