The Ragged Edge: The Disability Experience from The Pages of The Disability Rag

by Barrett Shaw (Editor)

Essay Anthology. What this book attempts to capture and convey is simply the experience of being a person with a disability in America today. From the It is hard to unravel the tangled, knotted ball of the disability experience - isolation and differentness versus a common identity; images of weakness, vulnerability, enforced childishness... This book attempts to weave a rough but strong cloth from these gnarled strands, to give the feel of the disability experience.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Chris Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. Disability is a such a big category it may be impossible to ever fully understand all the issues involved. But The Ragged Edge is a great first step.

This book is a series of essays, poems, and short stories written by people with disabilities. Some are angry, others funny, none are boring. Some are better written than others. But all are powerful for their raw honesty.

I was moved by these very personal stories. I had never before appreciated all the trials, fears, and anger people with disabilites live with everyday. Before reading this book I had some vague notion of the problems of access and acceptance, but I never thought about how humiliating it would be to be paraded before medical experts as some kind of freak show (read Lisa Blumberg's essay "Public Stripping"), or how heart rending it must be to hear arguments in favor of abortion rights rooted in the fact that people like you exist, or to live in a world where even one of the United States' most esteemed legal minds could pronounce "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" in support of the forced sterilization of the disabled.

You're apt to find yourself chastized by some of these stories. Good. But you'll have learned alot, gained new perspectives, and perhaps become more empathetic and understanding of a group of people who embody the truth that we're all broken people in the final analysis.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1994--what feels like a really long time ago in Politics (particularly identity politics, I would say).

However, like so many other issues, while incredible progress has been made still there is so much of the same. This book gives a pretty nice summary of recent history, a good amount of rhetoric and some personal stories. The writing isn't all great but some of it is, and I think that every piece in this book merits its place.