A mind-expanding collection of important stories.
An eye-opening collection of stories “about discrimination against individual people with disabilities and about exclusion of the group.”
Justesen settled in Chicago in 2014 after a career in Denmark as a human rights lawyer advocating for physically and mentally disabled men and women. Almost all the case studies here derive from oral histories she compiled in Chicago, inspired in part by the work of Studs Terkel. As the author shows, disabilities stretch far beyond those that are visible, such as blindness or the use of a wheelchair. Many of the disabilities of those she profiles may not be immediately apparent or constitute a condition generally outside widespread societal consciousness—e.g., deafness, autism, diabetes, dwarfism, severe arthritis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, depression, and more. For Justesen, negative treatment of individuals with disabilities constitutes a human rights violation. Throughout the text, she amplifies the repeated pleas of her interviewees: Please don’t treat me as a person to be pitied or as someone who cannot perform a high-level job; please don’t tease me or bully me, and please don’t pretend I am invisible when you encounter me. The book suggests that people of color who are disabled are often treated worse than white men and women. Justesen wisely includes oral histories of her subject’s paid caretakers as well as family members. As she clearly shows, poor treatment of the disabled yields negative ripple effects throughout society. The author opens the collection by illuminating the anger displayed by those who feel that they are considered “less than.” In the next section, Justesen explains the reality of disability entering the realm of “social construct,” akin to discrimination based on skin color or gender orientation. “Disability is not miserable,” she writes. “But not being regarded, not being respected, being seen as less than, not being treated with dignity, all this is miserable. Barriers in the world can make living with a disability miserable.”
A mind-expanding collection of important stories.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64160-158-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books/Chicago Review
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
