No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

No Pity : People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement by Joseph P. Shapiro


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hrm. Two not entirely compatible responses here. On the one hand, I want to tell everyone to read this book, because seriously, everyone should read this book. The history of the disability movement is essentially invisible to most Americans, and that's a shame on multiple levels. This book is extremely successful as historical account, from the first stirrings of community consciousness at Berkeley to the sputtering of civil disobedience, the twenty-five day takeover of the San Francisco Federal Building (orchestrated by a friend and mentor of mine, by the way), the Gallaudet student . . . revolt is the best word, the deinstitutionalization movement. You want drama, you want romance, it's all here, and most people have no idea.

However. This book was written by an able-bodied reporter, and, well, it shows. The author devoted years to it, and became a strong community ally, mind you, but this book is pitched at the average able-bodied American to educate on disability issues. So it ducks a lot of complication, and a lot of the nuance of disability experience is compressed into sound bites. See the section on the deaf community's splintered reaction to childhood implantation of cochlear implants for example – the capsule summary of 'we can cure you at birth!' versus 'you kill my culture!' is essentialist and a bit thin.

So this book is extremely valuable as a survey introduction, and an exercise in consciousness raising. And for that alone, I praise it. But its utility is limited. An excellent place to start and a terrible place to stop, is what I'm saying. Just looking down the reviews on the Goodreads page makes that abundantly clear.

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