Reblogged from: April 3, 2019 dereknewmanstille
By Derek Newman-Stille
As disabled people, we are written about constantly. We are shaped by texts. We have been written about by our doctors, by our schools, by our therapists, by our politicians…. We have been layered and layered with texts, and these texts are generally written by people who are NOT US – people who consider themselves experts on our experiences, who tell us that they have knowledge that is beyond our knowledge of our own bodies and selves. Indeed, we even need to rely on these experts to gain access to spaces and resources as disabled people. We need governmental policies to give us rights we should have as citizens, we need medical doctors’ reports to be considered disabled in the first place, and we need accommodation forms to get access to school resources. We are not only turned into text, we are made to DEPEND on text by other people.
Even fiction is often ABOUT US, written by people who are abled and trying to capture our experiences without talking to us. We get turned into tropes, into stories, into fictions… And we get told that these fictions represent us, and we get told by editors or publishers that our stories don’t “feel authentic” because they don’t match the tropes – they aren’t inspirational, they aren’t about overcoming, they aren’t about suffering, they aren’t about being lesser. Our stories are frequently rejected because the tropes are far more powerful than our voices.
That’s why I am excited about the collection Nothing Without Us – because it centres our voices. It is a collection of Crip voices, disabled voices, about us expressing ourselves and not being talked about. It is edited by two disabled people – Cait Gordon and Talia Johnson. It is published by a disabled publisher. And the way it is shaping up, it looks like it will be an anthology that speaks back to all of those narratives, texts, and stories imposed on us disabled folks.
So, what does it mean to write back? What does it mean for us to speak our own stories, to tell our own tales, to speak from the Crip body and mind?
I use the term “Crip” intentionally. I use it the same way as I use “Queer”, to speak back to a system that has sought to use these words to oppress us. “Crip” is a way of reclaiming the language… but it isn’t just another word for “disabled”. It is an intentional response to attempts to pacify us through language. It is a resistant word, a word made to disrupt, to challenge, and to speak back. It is meant to make people gasp and then to think about why that word is used. I call myself a Queer Crip because I don’t want to conform. I don’t want to be pacified by words because so many of our systems are based on pacifying us with words. Words are so often used to contain us, to confine us, and to render us Other. We wrestle with words because they are used to oppress. So, what happens when we share that wrestling with words? What happens when we tell our own stories and tell the world that OUR WORDS HAVE POWER?
Nothing Without Us is a complicated engagement with our words. It is shaping up to be an anthology that lets us, as disabled people, resist the confinements of hegemonic texts. It engages with realism because we have had so many narratives written about us that claim truth… but it also engages with imaginatory texts, with speculative texts. It recognizes the need for there to be an exploration of the imagination, because our rules, policies, and ideas about disability are shaped in the imagination, in the minds that ponder what disability means.
Nothing Without Us is a multi-genre text because, as disabled people, our lives don’t easily fit into one genre and we bristle at boxes or confines that try to imagine us as only one thing.
Nothing Without Us is a resistant text, a set of stories that provide a counter-narrative to narratives about us. It is about us telling our own stories and the power of our own stories to tear apart the stories and diagnoses and polices that have been written about us.
To discover more about Nothing Without Us, whose Kickstarter is happening right now, check out https://nothingwithoutusanthology.wordpress.com and support the kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/renaissancebp/nothing-without-us?ref=ksr_email_user_new_friend_project&fbclid=IwAR2-S8WRjKGuogbKi6aXSo6kvcUcYiQu4KXPW4Z2o9T8bpKfz-szxHJR1KA
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