lightreads

The Ragged Edge: the Disability Experience from the First Fifteen Years of the Disability Rag

What it says on the tin – a collection of standout pieces from Ragged Edge. I almost put it down in the first fifty pages before I got my head around reading the opening salvos like historical documents, the way you have to with first wave feminist texts. Then we stepped off the big philosophical stage and swung into tighter thematic issue sections – de-institutionalization, medical care, assisted suicide, eugenics, and there was nothing historical about that.

This book is fundamentally political. Actually, it's most coherent collective argument is about why the disability experience has to be politicized. Some of the content is online -- this piece of brilliant journalism about – no, you know what? Just read it.

Highly recommended for both the familiar scholar looking for something other than overburdened personal narrative and for the curious and uninitiated. Just don't expect to look at the world the same way when you're done.