“Rejecting the well-worn narratives of pity, scorn, othering, and medicalization that exist primarily for the benefit of the non-disabled, disabled people insist on better and richer stories about disability as a way of being and a way of knowing,” writes guest editor Charles L. Hughes. “This issue is rooted in a commitment to this call.”
“Disabled people insist on better and richer stories about disability as a way of being and a way of knowing.”
“Those who had been medically incarcerated for many years found it difficult to seek lives on the outside, having internalized their ostracization as public health criminals, menaces, and ‘pests.’”
“Ironically, limb loss, as a disability defined culturally by bodily absence, has been conspicuously present in much southern root music, particularly old-time music.”
“‘He told me he asked every day but he’d never got a letter in his life. So I used to send him cards sometimes.’”
"Once his hands stopped working, the drawings made their way out through his eyes. Not drawing was never an option."
“Krip-Hop really stems from our ancestors, saying that we’ve been here and that hip-hop artists with disabilities matter. We’ve been here since the blues, [since] jazz.”
“White medical professionals saw Black resistance to white supremacy as an exhibition of mental disability, extending a similar view of Black resistance during enslavement.”
“The same lack of services my ancestors said drove them to institutionalize Wade—the want of anyone to walk with him and make sure he got home safe—still drives disabled people into facilities today.”
“I witness the ‘absent presence’ of disability evident in the many walkers, canes, hearing aids, caregivers, silences, missing partners, and repetitive stories that fill the hallways and dining room.”
“We the magnolia tree"
