Kathleen Daughety

“But I was beginning to learn something very important: when institutions don’t want to do something, to claim that something is a “safety” issue is an easy argument to fall back on. It sounds so benign and protective. How could caring about safety possibly be wrong or discriminatory?”
― Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: The Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

“But it wouldn’t happen—the government would not take any responsibility—unless we made it impossible for them to ignore us. The idea of bringing a lawsuit against the Board of Ed was daunting, and I had no clue how to do it. I didn’t even know where to start. I definitely didn’t know any lawyers. The people I knew were butchers and cops, teachers and firefighters. How did one go about finding a lawyer? How could I possibly find one who would see the Board of Education’s decision as an issue of civil rights? If the ACLU didn’t get it, what hope did I have of finding a mainstream lawyer who got it? We decided we needed publicity. A disabled guy I knew from school was a journalism major and stringer for the New York Times. I called him and told him about the Board of Education’s decision. The next day a reporter named Andrew Malcolm called to interview me. A week later, the article, “Woman in Wheel Chair Sues to Become Teacher,” came out. It was 1970, and I was twenty-two years old.”
― Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

“I think my generation,” she said, “many getting killed, and beaten, and spit on, and dogs, and hoses, did not understand that you have to keep telling the story in order for people to understand. Each generation has to know the story of how we got where we are today, because if you don’t understand, then you are in the position to go back to it.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“I understood now why so many writers and artists, while in the thick of illness, became memoirists. It provided a sense of control, a way to reshape your circumstances on your own terms, in your own words. “That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is,” Jeanette Winterson wrote. “It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted