Customer Reviews

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

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This book is a compilation of real-life experiences through the eyes of writers who happen to have a disability. Having read this book, I am that much more aware of both the existence of societal discrimination, whether blantant or a result of ignorance, toward persons with disabilities and the unique perceptive persons with disabilities have on life.

This is a fantastic book. Disability is a such a big category it may be impossible to ever fully understand all the issues involved. But The Ragged Edge is a great first step.

This book is a series of essays, poems, and short stories written by people with disabilities. Some are angry, others funny, none are boring. Some are better written than others. But all are powerful for their raw honesty.

I was moved by these very personal stories. I had never before appreciated all the trials, fears, and anger people with disabilites live with everyday. Before reading this book I had some vague notion of the problems of access and acceptance, but I never thought about how humiliating it would be to be paraded before medical experts as some kind of freak show (read Lisa Blumberg's essay "Public Stripping"), or how heart rending it must be to hear arguments in favor of abortion rights rooted in the fact that people like you exist, or to live in a world where even one of the United States' most esteemed legal minds could pronounce "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" in support of the forced sterilization of the disabled.

You're apt to find yourself chastized by some of these stories. Good. But you'll have learned alot, gained new perspectives, and perhaps become more empathetic and understanding of a group of people who embody the truth that we're all broken people in the final analysis.

I liked this book. It has a lot of different perspectives, lots of articles from various parts of the disability movement. It really captures the flavour of the movement in its early days.

I'm, Girard Sagmiller the author of the book Dyslexia My Life (ISBN: 096430871-1) . The book The Ragged Edge
, is one of the top book for find out about living with a Disability
, great for anybody feeling as if they are the only one dealing with this or for someone working with a disability group.. Thanks..