Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out

by Kenny Fries

In this groundbreaking and far-reaching collection, writers such as Andre Dubus, Stanley Elkin, and Adrienne Rich, confront what it means to be disabled in our society. Through the vehicles of nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and drama, Staring Back is the first anthology to open the landscape of the disabled experience for exploration and discussion.

Genres: Disability, Poetry, Nonfiction, Disability Studies, Queer, Short Stories, Essays

432 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Kenny Fries received the prestigious Creative Capital literature grant for In the Province of the Gods. He is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and the author of the libretto for The Memory Stone, an opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. His books of poems include Anesthesia, Desert Walking, and In the Gardens of Japan.

Kenny received the Creative Arts Fellowship from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, has twice been a Fulbright Scholar (Japan and Germany), and has received grants from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange), Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council.

He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College.

Reviews

[Sarah Rigg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The name of the anthology comes from the experience of many disabled people of being stared at. This is all about disability from their own perspective. It starts with nonfiction essays, moves to poetry, then fictional short stories or excerpts from longer novels, and concludes with some excerpts from plays.

The anthology kicks off with "Pony Party," a chapter from Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face," and up next is "Walking with the Kurds", an excerpt from John Hockenberry's "Moving Violations." I'd read both of those already but they're so good it was a pleasure to re-read them.

I was familiar with a couple other writers, having read (and loved) another book by the editor, Kenny Fries, and having read stuff by Nancy Mairs and Andre Dubus before. However, Fries introduced me to a lot of new-t0-me writers and material.

Essays I especially liked were "Falling into Life" by Leonard Kriegel, "Carnal Acts" by Nancy Mairs, and "Living in an Unstable Body" by Barbara Rosenblum. Most of the poetry was outstanding, but I especially liked "The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle" by Tom Andrews, "Body Language" by Fries, "Cancer Winter" by Marilyn Hacker, "Learning Braille at 39" by Stephen Kuusisto, and "The Magic Wand" by Lynn Manning.

Of the fiction, "Dancing After Hours" by Andre Dubus was the standout, though "Coitus Interruptus" by Mike Ervin was a hoot. The excerpts from plays were all good, and I learned a few things about disability activist history I hadn't previously known from them.

I really appreciated that Fries, who is queer himself, made an effort to include LGBTQ disabled authors as well as authors of color. Disabled POC authors are especially underrepresented in the publishing world, I find. I recommend this highly. I am only giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because some pieces were stronger than others.

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[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hit and miss anthology, but the hits are worth the ride Lynn Manning’s poems are a high point, as are the three plays, particularly Blue Baby by Katrina Neuhof and Mishuganismo by Susan Nussbaum, fellow Chicagoan.

Fiction is forgettable, non-fiction has a couple stand outs.

[Savanna Landvatter]

I feel like I can’t totally say I read this cause I read a few chapters for a class, not quite the whole thing. Interesting, some incredible stories, some that didn’t really stand out to me.