34 - Disability and the American Essay

Summary

Starting in the early twentieth century, this chapter surveys the most significant essays about disability and essays written by writers with disabilities, including Helen Keller, Randolph Bourne, Paul K. Longmore, Leonard Kriegel, and Esmé Weijun Wang. Exploring the common themes and the rich variety of styles represented in these essays, the chapter synthesizes a wide array of firsthand experiences by people with blindness, polio, schizophrenia, deformities, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions. Some of these essays highlight the discrimination and exclusion faced by the authors – Longmore’s stories of the financial hardships he faced due to his disability are a particularly compelling example – while others craft a new poetics to describe the singularity and promise of a life lived with a disability. The chapter closes with contemporary essays that illustrate the extent to which the field of disability writing has greatly diversified in the twenty-first century, offering a more extensive record of human experience.