Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back

225 Pages·2013·1.17 MB·English

by  Harilyn Rousso

Don’t Call Me Inspirational

H a r I ly n rousso
Don’t Call Me
Inspirational
{
A Disabled Feminist Talks Back
Temple university Press Philadelphia
TeMPle unIversITy Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2013 by Temple university
all rights reserved
Published 2013
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
rousso, Harilyn, 1946–
Don’t call me inspirational : a disabled feminist talks back /
Harilyn rousso.
p. cm.
IsBn 978-1-4399-0936-2 (cloth : alk. paper) —
IsBn 978-1-4399-0937-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
IsBn 978-1-4399-0938-6 (e-book) 1. rousso, Harilyn,
1946– 2. Women with disabilities—united states—Biography.
3. Feminists—united states—Biography. 4. People with
disabilities—united states—Psychology. 5. Discrimination
against people with disabilities—united states. I. Title.
Hv3013.r68a3 2013
362.4092—dc23
[B]
2012025882
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
american national standard for Information sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed library Materials, ansI Z39.48-1992
Printed in the united states of america
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
{
In loving memory of my parents,
evelyn and David rousso;
my partner Gene Brown’s parents,
estelle and Morton Brown;
and my sister-in-law, Judy rousso

Contents
Preface ix
acknowledgments xi
I Close enCounTers WITH THe Clueless
1 Who’s Harilyn? 3
2 Birth, Mine 13
3 Close encounters with the Clueless 17
4 The Beggar and the Cripple 18
5 The stare 22
6 always the other 23
7 Why I am Not Inspirational 25
8 Home 26
II on leavInG HoMe
9 Wedding Day, 1933 29
10 Dancing 32
11 exploding Beans 34
12 My sister 37
13 adolescent Conversation 41
14 on leaving Home 44
15 Hideous shoes 56
16 Driving High 57
17 eli 60
18 My Father, Myself 67
19 Driving away from Home 71
III on noT lookInG In THe MIrror
20 Walk straight! 79
21 on not looking in the Mirror 82
22 Facing My Face 84
vii
Contents
23 Meditations on speech and silence 90
24 Daring Digits 98
25 right-Hand Painting 100
26 Being only one: some Meditations on solitude 105
Iv WHaT’s a WoMan?
27 What’s a Woman? 113
28 He Was the one 117
29 Blank Page 119
30 Buying the Wedding Dress 120
31 First Date 123
32 First night 134
33 Mixed Couple 137
34 sylvester 144
35 Faces of eve 146
36 Tough Bird 149
37 Hand in Hand 153
v WHy ClaIM DIsaBIlITy?
38 Finding My Way 159
39 keeping the Distance 161
40 That “Inspirational” label 162
41 Token of approval 163
42 Disabled Women’s Community 175
43 The story of Betty, revisited 180
44 listening to Myself 183
45 activist sisters 184
46 Toilet Troubles 191
47 My Mentoring Project 192
48 Why Claim Disability? 204
49 Broken silences 205
50 eulogy for My nondisabled self 206
51 eulogy for My Freakish self 207
52 ode to My Disabled self 208
viii
Preface
When I began writing the pieces that became the chapters
of this book, I had no intention of writing a book, much
less a memoir. My mother had recently died after a lengthy illness.
While she was ill, she had turned into an unhappy, angry person
with little resemblance to the strong, feisty woman who had had
such a powerful, positive influence on my life. I started writing
about her in an attempt to recapture that spirited mother of my
childhood. Through those early pieces, my familiar, strong-willed
mother reappeared and began once again, for better or worse, to
reassert her influence on me. I found writing very healing, and
I learned a great deal about the power of words to capture and
transform both the past and the present.
once I realized what was happening, I became hooked on
writing, and I began exploring other issues in my life that elicited
strong emotions—shame, pain, anger, and frustration, as well as
joy and humor. over time, I found that I was writing increasingly
about my feelings and attitudes about being a woman with a dis-
ability, and I realized how much these feelings had changed over
the course of my life. I had grown up denying my disability but
had come to embrace it as a source of positive identity and com-
munity; as a young adult I had doubted my womanhood, but I
now declared myself a feminist. While I intuitively understood
many of the factors that contributed to these changes, I did not
reflect on them deeply until I began writing. Writing became a
means of reflecting, recording, and, in some cases, revealing to
myself my deepest secrets. In conjunction with my work as an ac-
tivist and an artist, it became another way to confront the preju-
dice and discrimination I had faced as a disabled woman.
after I had been writing about my experiences for many years,
a participant in one of the writing workshops I was attending
suggested that I had a book on my hands. I was first surprised
and then anxious—do I really want to reveal so much of myself?
eventually, I became hopeful that some of my experiences might
ix