Customer Reviews

Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (American Subjects)

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Paul K. Longmore is a historian. He wrote a well reviewed book on George Washington. In 1988, in front of the federal building in Los Angeles, he burned a copy of his book. Longmore saves the essay about the book burning until the end of Why I Burned My Book; Longmore needs to take the reader on a long and instructive journey through the history, imagery, and ethics of disabilities and disability rights so that the reader will understand why someone would burn their own book. Longmore's perspective as a historian with excellent writing skills and a physical disability probably isn't unique, but it certainly makes him more than qualified to write on the history of the disability rights movement. I enjoyed the history essays [which make up slightly less than half the book] the most. I found the essays on assisted suicide to be the most challenging. I support assisted suicide in principle, but I found Longmore's arguments in opposition well stated and troubling, and they've been swirling around my brain ever since I read them. I highly recommend Why I Burned My Book to anyone wanting a deeper understanding of disability and the disability rights movement.

Brilliant book by a fabulous writer, historian, activist and educator. Prof Longmore for years has been teaching, writing and championing disability history -- in fact he is just this week receving an award from the American Association of People with Disabilities for his ongoing scholarship and his role as "an intellectual force and passionate spokesperson for all disabled people's right to dignified supports for independent living and self-determination." With solid logic and accessible language (pun intended), he demonstrates how social prejudices and institutional discrimination shape the lives of disabled americans as much--if not more--than any physical frailties or limitations. This work is simply too good to pass up! An excellent introduction to disability history and disability rights -- and a welcome antidote to the willful ignorance evident in the last review by "mipater."

Paul Longmore is one of the most important writers and thinkers about the phenomenon of being disabled. His cogent, well researched analysis of the prejudices and stereotypes behind social policy and treatment of people with disabilities in the US is enormously helpful to both understand the role of disability but also to craft policy to eliminate disproportionate and negative practices.

Collection of reviews and other materials on disability studies, operating from a rejection of the medical model of disability (disability is about individual deficits) and adopting the social model (disability is about structures of exclusion, prejudices, and responses). There are historical essays and film reviews; for me the most challenging pieces were about assisted suicide. By limiting resources for people with disabilities, society can coerce them into accepting that suicide is the best option available--but that's a false dichotomy: "The rhetoric of `choice' is deployed to hide the realities of coercion."

One man who sought assistance committing suicide lived in a state willing to pay $230 a day to keep him in a nursing home, but under $300 a month for him to live in his own apartment with assistance. It struck me that this was a micro example of how failure to provide for everyone's medical needs disciplines all workers/potential workers. Longmore writes about the way that social assistance in the US has been divided into programs for "deserving" workers and for the "needy," both of whom are stigmatized and used to police the bounds of acceptability. Being in need is defined as being deficient, contrary to the realities of human existence. This has obvious general implications for how employees relate to their employers, but consider the nursing home example in this light: because of minimum wage laws, a much higher percentage of the money spent on in-home care would go to the caregiver, and in-home care would also create more jobs because of the economies of scale in a nursing home. So disempowering people with disabilities by only funding nursing home care helps control other workers as well.

Longmore finishes by explaining why he burned his book: because of the disempowering regulations that prevented him from earning royalties, which might disqualify him for the assistance he needs to live independently. The regulations that discourage people with disabilities from working are still, counterproductively, mostly in place, and his perserverance is startling; he points out that receiving pensions can disqualify people for assistance, thus condemning them for having worked. It's a ridiculously counterproductive situation and also a dehumanizing one.

Paul Longmore, my uncle, passed away in August 2010. His work will continue to challenge and expand our culture's perception, treatment, and understanding of people with disabilities.

I just cannot accept the fact that the truly handicapped have the demands that authors such as Longmore states. It's as though only a small number of disabled (and a large number of their lawyers) yell, scream, and whine for "rights" that are never denied from them in the first place.

As Disabling America taught me (ISBN: 0785262253), the disabled did not want to be turned into victims but that's exactly what the ADA did.