Showing results for "life-" in People with Disabilities

Caring or careless? In this powerful and moving essay, Micheline Lee tells the story of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, a transformative social change that ran into problems. For some users it has been “the only lifeboat in the ocean,” but for others it has meant still more exclusion. Lee explains what happened, showing that the NDIS, for all its good intentions, has not understood people with disabilities well enough. While government thought the market could do its job, a caring society cannot be outsourced.

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diagnosed with psychiatric illness or cognitive deficiencies. Not until the 1980s would these murders, as well as the coercive sterilizations of some four hundred thousand others classified as “feeble-minded,” be officially acknowledged as crimes at all. The Question of Unworthy Life charts this history from its origins in prewar debates about the value of disabled lives to our continuing efforts to unlearn eugenic thinking today.

Most histories of wounded Civil War veterans construe them as feminized men whose manhood has suffered due to their inability to provide for and raise families or engage in business. Wounded for Life complicates this picture by examining how seven veterans—six soldiers and one physician—coped with their changed bodies in their postwar lives. Through these intimate stories, author Robert D. Hicks looks at the veteran's body as shaped by the trauma of the battlefield and hospital and the construction of a postwar identity in relation to that trauma.

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said: "let there be a law that no deformed child shall live." This idea is alive and well today. During the past century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the United States can forcibly sterilize intellectually disabled women and philosopher Peter Singer argued for the right of parents to euthanize certain cognitively disabled infants. The Life Worth Living explores how and why such arguments persist by investigating the exclusion of and discrimination against disabled people across the history of Western moral philosophy.

This powerful, honest, hilarious and furious memoir from journalist and advocate Lucy Webster looks at life at the intersection; the struggles, the joys and the unseen realities of being a disabled woman. From navigating the worlds of education and work, dating and friendship; to managing care; contemplating motherhood; and learning to accept your body against a pervasive narrative that it is somehow broken and in need of fixing, The View From Down Here shines a light on what it really means to move through the world as a disabled woman.

When John Tovey lost his sight at the age of 42, he thought his life was over. He was wrong, it was just beginning. John had followed a bad path drifting in and out of trouble. He was sent to improvement schools, a young offenders institute and eventually a prison. John was on self-destruct and thought nothing or no one could help him. Then he became the victim of a vicious attack by a notorious train ‘steaming’ gang. John knew he had to take the witness stand.

Random House presents I'm Only In It for the Parking written by Lost Voice Guy aka Lee Ridley.

What’s the worst thing about being disabled? Is it the shameless staring? Is it that people assume you’re a bit thick because you can’t speak? Or is it the fact that your friends always take you to theme parks just so they can jump the queues?

In fact, it’s the stupid questions that really rile Lee Ridley, aka Lost Voice Guy. And over the years he’s been inundated with them, from people who have failed to engage their brains before opening their mouths....

While finishing off her degree in Gerontology at Umass Boston, Yvonne Decelis started writing about her life in the hope of showing others with similar conditions that they are not alone in the trials they face. Yvonne goes over her upbringing and life prior to, during, and after diagnosis covering things like medications, “healthful living”, work, SSDI disability benefits, friendships, and relationships, etc. This was also written for people seeking information on how to interact with others who have "invisible illnesses" like MS, Fibro, Post-traumatic Stress injury, etc.

Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves The Beatles, pizza, and making lists. At four he is like many young people his age, but his Down syndrome leads most people to see him only in terms of his disability. Twenty years later Michael Bérubé chronicles his son's growth and his growing love of the world, writing as both a disability studies scholar and as a father.

A brilliantly honest, funny, and insightful account of a Buddhist's life, work, and family. For Satyadasa, the Buddhist path has been fulfilling and often joyous, but also full of doubts and obstacles.

Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature". More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered 21 children between them. More than a biography of the twins, this is a study of 19th-century American culture and society that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.

Linda Dezenski pulls no punches in this raw and revealing memoir. Born with Cerebral Palsy, Linda takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the ups and downs of life with a body that doesn't always cooperate and a society that often misunderstands. But Getting to the Real Me isn't just about struggles—it's a story of triumph. With humor and heart, Linda shares her lightbulb moment: disability doesn't define her, it's just part of the package. Join Linda as she learns to embrace her whole self and discovers her mission to help others do the same.

In Imperfect, Jim Abbot retraces his remarkable journey. Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott as a boy dreamed of being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who saw in his condition not a disability but an extraordinary opportunity, Jim became a two-sport standout in high school, then an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning. By 21, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels....

Who Wants Normal? lifts the lid off a subject that is too often shrouded in awkwardness and silence. It offers support, inspiration and a sense of solidarity to the many, many women with disabilities and long-term health issues – as well as opening the eyes of anyone wanting to better understand the many facets of living with a disability.

From the Periphery consists of more than 30 first-person narratives of everyday people who describe what it's like to be treated differently by society because of their disabilities. The stories are raw and painful, but also surprisingly funny and deeply inspiring. The oral histories describe anger, independence, bigotry, solidarity, and love - in the family, at school, and at the workplace. From the Periphery will become a classic collection that increases understanding of the lived experiences of people with disabilities.

Come, Let Me Guide You explores the intimate communication between author Susan Krieger and her guide dog Teela over the 10-year span of their working life together. This is a book about being led by a dog to new places in the world and new places in the self, a book about facing life's challenges outwardly and within, and about reading those clues - those deeply felt signals - that can help guide the way.

Developing a cybernetic model of subjectivity and personhood that honors disability experiences to reconceptualize the category of the human.