'What Happened to You?': Writing by Disabled Women

By Saundra Pollock Sturdevant and Mary Louise Kelly

Book Overview

Lois Keith was thirty-five, with a successful career, two daughters, and a partner of many years, when she was hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down. Over the next few years, she discovered both a community of disabled people and a paucity of literature and public understanding about their lives.

In response, she began soliciting the manuscripts that make up "What Happened to You?", a candid, powerful, and often hilarious collection of fiction, essays, and poetry by women with disabilities. Coming from a wide range of backgrounds and ages, impairments and experiences, the thirty-six women included in the book write on everything from access to abuse, equality to equanimity, in what may well be the definitive volume on living with a disability.

At the same time, this anthology tells a universal story about dealing with pain and illness, about overcoming prejudice and unjust legislation, and about the importance, regardless of an individual's fortitude, of creating a community.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565840259
• ISBN13: 9781565840256
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

universally touching

I loved this book so much. I thought it was so wonderful that it was inclusive of women from many different cultural backgrounds and with many different disabilities. I was especially appreciative that they included mental illness in this book "Agorophobia:letting go," by Pam Mason, because so many times it is brushed off and blamed on the victim. I would highly recommend this book to any woman who knows what its like to go through lifes ups and downs.

Strong Voices

If you are a woman with a disability, know a woman with a disability, or care about women with disabilities, this is a must read. Out of all of the anthologies written by women, this is the most accessible. If you are looking for a gift for someone you love, don't pass it up.