Customer Reviews

Sisters, Brothers, and Disability: Family Album

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Sisters, Brothers, and Disability tells the stories of 26 families, each with at least one disabled child, and a sibling. The disabilities vary: they are developmental, sensory and physical. What the disabilities are doesn't matter as much as who the children are. Author Lydia Gans is sensitive to the fact that two children with cerebral palsy may have very different personalities, and effect their siblings very differently, than may two children with similar personalities and different disabilities.

As much as the text, the 142 photographs of these families show the uniqueness of each one. What is especially important about this book is that the focus is not on the disabled children, but on their siblings. Moreover, Gans has not asked the siblings their feelings about disabilities, but from the text, has simply asked them to talk about their brothers and sisters: what do they do together, what things do they have in common, what tastes do they share, what kinds of rivalry do they experience? What's most likely to make them fight? In some cases, siblings volunteered that they care for a brother or sister, and Gans leaves this with no comment. Eventually the reader notices a pattern, and realizes that most of the siblings who assumed caretaker roles were older than the disabled child. Some sibs did push wheelchairs, but some coasted along, standing on the back of the chair.

Gans includes no analytic text. Analysis is for the reader. However, the picture is overall happy. I hate to spoil things with my own analysis, so I won't. I'll just say that I work in habilitation and developing community living skills in disabled adolescents and adults, and these families were quite real to me; they could all be people I know and work with.

I believe this book explores an under-reported aspect of disabled people's lives, and I'm very glad it has been published.