Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

I  Close Encounters with the Clueless
1 Who’s Harilyn?
2 Birth, Mine
3 Close Encounters with the Clueless
4 The Beggar and the Cripple
5 The Stare
6 Always the Other
7 Why I am Not Inspirational
8 Home

II On Leaving Home
9 Wedding Day, 1933
10 Dancing
11 Exploding Beans
12 My Sister
13 Adolescent Conversation
14 On Leaving Home
15 Hideous Shoes
16 Driving High
17 Eli
18 My Father, Myself
19 Driving away from Home

III On Not Looking in the Mirror
20 Walk Straight!
21 On Not Looking in the Mirror
22 Facing My Face
23 Meditations on Speech and Silence
24 Daring Digits
25 Right-Hand Painting
26 Being Only One: Some Meditations on Solitude

IV What's a Woman?
27 What’s a Woman?
28 He Was the One
29 Blank Page
30 Buying the Wedding Dress
31 First Date
32 First Night
33 Mixed Couple
34 Sylvester
35 Faces of Eve
36 Tough Bird
37 Hand in Hand

V Why Claim Disability?
38 Finding My Way
39 Keeping the Distance
40 That “Inspirational” Label
41 Token of Approval
42 Disabled Women’s Community
43 The Story of Betty, Revisited
44 Listening to Myself
45 Activist Sisters
46 Toilet Troubles
47 My Mentoring Project
48 Why Claim Disability?
49 Broken Silences
50 Eulogy for My Nondisabled Self
51 Eulogy for My Freakish Self
52 Ode to My Disabled Self

A disabled woman confronts body image, sexuality, bias, discrimination, and condescension as she fashions an independent and fulfilling life

Harilyn Rousso is a disability activist, feminist, psychotherapist, writer, and painter. She is the President of Disabilities Unlimited Consulting Services, founder of the Networking Project for Disabled Women and Girls, coeditor of Double Jeopardy: Addressing Gender Equity in Special Education and author of Disabled, Female and Proud!