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Paul K. Longmore. Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2003), 288 pp.
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This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Americans with disabilities.
Whether writing about the social critic Randolph Bourne, contemporary political activists, or media representations of people with disabilities, Longmore demonstrates that the search for heroes is a key part of the continuing struggle of disabled people to gain a voice and to shape their destinies. His essays on bioethics and public policy examine the conflict of agendas between disability rights activists and non-disabled policy makers, healthcare professionals, euthanasia advocates, and corporate medical bureaucracies. The title essay, which concludes the book, demonstrates the necessity of activism for any disabled person who wants access to the American dream.
“Paul Longmore’s sharp and cogent criticism has always sought and
found the soul of the disability rights movement. But these essays go far beyond
activism and constitute a cultural document for a people adrift. Longmore’s
refreshing views represent an intellectual Ellis Island for people with disabilities,
hampered by bureaucracy, myth and sentiment, trying to find a place in America.”
– John Hockenberry
NBC News
“Paul Longmore is simply the best historian now writing about disabilities. This volume collects a series of major essays that have shaped the academic and public discourse about disabilities inside of and beyond the university. From the unwritten history of disabled people to questions of assisted suicide, and the public face of disability culture, Longmore writes intelligently, compassionately, and readably. Read these essays and learn!”
– Sander Gilman
Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and of Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago
Paul K. Longmore is Professor of History at San Francisco State University.
He is the author of The Invention of George Washington and the co-editor
(with Lauri Umansky) of The New Disability History: American Perspectives.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Analyses and Reconstructions
Disability Watch
The Life of Randolph Bourne and the Need for a History of Disabled People
Uncovering the Hidden History of Disabled People
The League of the Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression:
A Case Study in the New Disability History
Activism in the 1970s and Beyond
Richard Nixon and the Disability-Rights Movement: An Unintended Legacy
The 504 Sit-in of April 1977: the Disability Rights Movement Comes of Age
The Independent Living Movement
Images and Reflections
Film Reviews
Answer to Whose Life Is It, Anyway?
Mask: A Revealing Portrayal
The Glorious Rage of Christy Brown
Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled People in Television and Motion Pictures
Ethics and Advocacy
Elizabeth Bouvia, Assisted Suicide, and Social Prejudice
The Resistance: The Disability Rights Movement and Assisted Suicide
Medical Decision Making and People with Disabilities: A Clash of Cultures
Protests and Forecasts
The Second Phase: From Disability Rights to Disability Culture
Princeton and Peter Singer
Why I Burned My Book
In the series American Subjects, edited by Robert Dawidoff.
The American Subjects series, edited by Robert Dawidoff, will introduce readers to unfamiliar areas or figures in American culture. All of the titles in this series will be the first on their particular subject. Each will tell an unfamiliar story and will emphasize the cultural side of how Americans have lived and what they have created or thought.
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