Disability Literature Blogs: An Update

No one who logs onto the Internet needs to be told about the proliferation of blogs. Whatever one might have to say about the quality of blogs writing, there is no denying that it has been democratizing. For small quarterly journals like Wordgathering, Kaleidoscope and Breath and Shadow, this is good news. Despite our best efforts, we recognize that the literature that we try to promote reaches very few. Blogs, on the other hand, if unpredicatable in schedule, tend to provide much more frequent opportunities to think about disability literature. In past issues, Wordgathering, has tried to give some space to discussing blogs. The December 2010 issue described a number of blogs that followers of Wordgathering might to check out and, in her article "Social Media: Tools for Writers, Too", Maya Northen describes some considerations that potential bloggers should take into account. Now it is time for an update.

In recommending blogs, we have several criteria. First, and most obviously, we wanted blogs that were concerned with disability literature. Next, we chose sites that were truly blogs and not simply a site a writer had set up to promote their own work. While such promotiopnal websites certainly have their place and Wordgathering is always glad to include links to authors pages in bios, we were looking for places where writers really discussed or reflected upon disability and literary issues. Finally, we chose blogs from writers whose work we know from their contributions to Wordgathering. Of course, all of these parameters narrow the field tremendously, but those listed below are quality work – and just how many blogs do most readers want to follow, anyway?

Here are some Wordgathering recommendations with brief excerpts from a recent sample blog.

Stephen Kuusisto – Planet of the Blind

The Able-bodied Blues

Planet of the Blind is possibly the most widely known and respected blog in field of disability literature. It sets a standard for the kind of engagement that it elicits from its readers. Kuusisto's topics range from poetry to literary criticism to politics to his experiences as a blind world traveler. On any given day, his blog may be humorous, meditative or outraged. There is rarely an entry that does not provoke thought.

Disability is the orphan of multiculturalism. There. I’ve said it. It’s painful to do so. Painful because my politics are inclusive and I worry daily about other people’s children, children of all colors. Worry about cruelty, joblessness, violence, the prison-industrial-complex; worry about misogyny. I teach against these things. I’ve marched for gay rights. Written against the war. But now at 58, (I’ll be 59 in three weeks) I’ve grown impatient with the able-bodied pure products of America because my people, all 60 plus million of them, who are arguably the largest minority group in this nation—are still ignored by television, radio, newspapers, Hollywood, academic conferences, hotels, airlines, you name it, unless we tell an "overcoming story" in which the reality of disability is ameliorated by a Tiny Tim smile, a miraculous cure, or a two day allowance where a kid with Down Syndrome gets to be on a basket ball team. The reality of disability must always be suborned, deflected, pushed into a closet. Meantime, real disabled people are almost 80% unemployed, their food stamps and disability support services are being cut to pieces, rehabilitation programs are woeful and inadequate, accessibility guarantees required under the ADA are bypassed by a zillion businesses and institutions of higher learning. As the old song goes: "its a hard knock life, for us."

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Daniel Simpson – Inside the Invisible: A Blind Writer's View of Living the Attentive Life

Dan Simpson's blog may be the new kid on the block of this group, but as a gifted poet himself, Dan's thoughts on writing are always insightful. Though much of what he writes is concerned with craft or of the experiences of being a blind poet, he also writes deeply about other subjects as the brief excerpt below intimates.

Dave

Most alibis for not writing are really just excuses. I’ve given other "good reasons" for my tardiness in writing this blog. I have a different one this time, but one I know to be clearly acceptable.

My twin brother Dave has ALS. That’s right, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

He started to think something odd was happening to him a year ago. After lugging two huge suitcases on a 14-hour train trip from Philadelphia to northeast Georgia, spending that first day in Georgia, mostly on his feet, setting up his writing studio at The Hambidge Center, then the next few weeks writing his ass off, he went for a hike with another artist. They hadn’t gone ten minutes when his companion said, "Am I going too fast for you?" If you’ve ever walked with Dave, you know he could leave most people in the dust. Now, no more. Dave replied, "I know I’m not in the best of shape, but I didn’t think I was this far out. I’m winded already, and my legs feel rubbery." They headed back to his studio. He finished out his stay, keeping fully in the present, thriving on conversation with fellow creators, and making great headway on his one-person play. But when he got back home, the months of doctor visits, lab work, MRI’s, and muscle tests began.

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John Lee Clark – Notes from a Deafblind Writer

Anyone familiar with John Lee Clark's work knows that whatever he takes on is with a passionate advocacy. Notes from a deafblind writer considers a wide range of topics but Clark's specialties are the interrogation of literary work related to portrayals of the life Deaf and/or blind individuals, and social advocacy. Like Kuusisto's, Clark voice carries it's own stamp and frequently challenges readers to reconsider their perspectives.

Not Good Enough?

Alison Aubrecht, a wonderful Deaf poet who has a new collection out called Almost, responded to my Deaf Poetry Zero post. In it, I asked why there weren’t any deaf poetry included in any of the popular anthologies. She asked a series of counter-questions. I’d like to respond to the first one here:

"Because the work of Deaf authors isn’t good enough?"

I had to smile, because this too was my first thought. It’s a question a writer would ask, because the writing life is full of self-doubt. Add to that the doubts inherent in being members of an oppressed people–yes, it’s no surprise that, in our double anxiety, this ugly thought would be the first one to leap out at us. "Maybe we’re just not good enough."

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Michael Uniacke – The Unguarded Quarter

The trademark quality of The Unguarded Quarter is Uniacke's sense of humor and inventiveness. His posts are less frequent than other bloggers in this group, but his subjects include Deaf culture, media and politics – from an Australian point of view. Unniecke's influence shows up in two diverse essays in this issue of Wordgathering, Curtis Robbins' essay on Henry Lawson and his own satiric piece, "Old MacDonald had a Laugh."

The Deafness of Henry Lawson

Did Henry Lawson create idyllic scenes of yarns around campfires because he was deaf and could not take part in them? IF HENRY Lawson was alive today, what would he say at a press conference? For starters, perhaps he would make a sardonic comment about his profile on the old ten-dollar note. However we could be certain of one thing: he would not hear the questions asked of him. It would not be obvious. Asked something, Lawson, like some of his characters, would probably pause and appear to be deep in thought. He might even suddenly launch on a strange or irrelevant tack to evade the question. It would be easy to regard such quirky behaviour as evidence of a character defect. But such behaviour would also be a normal response from someone who speaks but who does not hear. Appearing to be deep in thought, it is less likely that he would be formulating his reply; it is more likely his mind would be working furiously to decipher the question.

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Mark Burnhope – Naming the Beasts

As the heading of British poet Mark Burnhope's blog advertises, the concerns of Naming the Beast are "poetry-disabiilty-artistry-theology-equality." Burnhope's posts frequently include poetry and, as the originator of Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos, his in interests in disabiilty and the politcal process in Great Britain are on display as well.

Crip/tography and Contemplation: Maybe Hope Still Burns?

Why has it suddenly occurred to me, again, that Jesus was a political and theological radical, an active(ist) contemplative fervently committed to a social justice that might free the oppressed, topple the establishment’s tables, put the last first? Someone that, like Nelson Mandela, I can’t help but admire and maybe even follow, even (or especially) on my most angry and depressed days? Even on those days when I can’t help but stare at the fact that Christians have so often been complicit in the same fascism as government; so often mirrored the world’s Social Darwinist / eugenics agenda in their Prosperity theology (yes, even if you don’t think you were influenced by prosperity theology, if you were a white Christian in the UK, you were). I couldn't escape it. It was everywhere. It was there every time somebody said that if I just confessed my sin, I could get up and walk. It was there when, at every healing meeting I ever attended, I dreaded the altar call because people surrounding me would constantly whisper "Are you going up to get prayed for?" and if I answered "No. I’m fine actually", they'd look at me with shock, surprise and sometimes all-out disdain, like I was displeasing God for being proud, not ashamed, of how I was born. If God is God, she doesn't make mistakes: that was my inner conviction. But the battle cry that able-bodied people constantly shouted, like the baying of a crowd carrying torches and pitchforks, a pack of wolves snarling and howling around me, was: "Heal the sick and save the lost!" I couldn't escape at least one of those categories, maybe two: if I wasn't ‘lost’, I was still 'sick' until God would choose to bless an able-bodied person with the spectacle of witnessing my physical healing.

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Kathryn Allan – Bleeding Chrome

Kathryn Allan's blog Bleeding Chrome is perhaps the most specialized, and possibly academic, of all the blogs recommended here, but it is a must – taking a range of topics dealing with science fiction and disability that rarely appear in other blogs. Her analysis of texts point to important considerations for the future of disability while lending a Canadian perspective.

Disability in Rise of the Planet of the Apes

In Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), the Planet of the Apes franchise goes high-tech–both in terms of the films extensive use of CGI to create the lead ape, Caesar, and in its key plot device of the creation and misuse of a "neurogenesis"drug. Referred to as "the cure" for Alzheimer’s disease, the drug ends up significantly transforming the primate mind. Like most cure narratives in science fiction, the film speaks to Western culture’s preference for an idealized "wholeness" and imagines a scenario where only the most physically dominant and intellectually capable survive (represented by the technologically-enhanced chimpanzee, Caesar). As Elaine Graham writes in Representations of the Post/Human, however, it is essential that we interrogate such narratives of the future "ideal" body: "What is at stake, supremely, in the debate about the implications of digital, genetic, cybernetic and biomedical technologies is precisely what (and who) will define authoritative notions of normative, exemplary, desirable humanity into the twenty-first century" . As a way to distance itself from the overt racist politics of the original Planet of the Apes series, I argue that Rise of the Planet of the Apes instead emphasizes a normative humanity predicated on the erasure of the "undesirable" ill and disabled body.

The Editors