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jesse_the_kAnna Hamilton is another great writer I met through FWD. I just found their graphic memoir NERVOUS SYSTEMS, hosted on their blog, Too Much Tea. I surprised myself by really liking their basic confessional art style. I generally prefer consciously arty, carefully drawn and colored comics. But these simple pictures, paired with their well-read insight into growing up disabled, managed to break through into my feelings. There are excellent disability studies footnotes. AND, you can learn a bunch without reading any of them. I particularly appreciate the parallels they expose between marked bodies, both "woman" and "disabled."
As Anna says in their afterword:
One aspect of academic writing, and theory, that has confused me for a long time is the expectation that both will be—and should be—written in a style that is inaccessible to all but a comparatively select few. Part of my reason for choosing a format—the graphic novel—that is not looked at as “serious” was to make some very important theoretical concepts accessible to a non-academic audience. Additionally, my own theoretical project of examining women’s chronic physical pain in contemporary culture relates a lot to my own life experiences, and I have had trouble writing about these experiences “academically enough.”
The art is 48 print pages, broken into three web-pages, plus complete image descriptions — which make it very convenient for me to quote the comic-as-text:
from p 10 VISIBLE
Panel 1: Image of Anna’s feet.
Text: The CP had—and has—an odd status as far as “visibility” is concerned.
Panel 2: Teenage Anna silently responds to a person who asks what’s wrong with their foot.
Text: Even while I was growing up, I always felt weird—and a little angry—whenever people would “helpfully” point out my limp.
Speech bubble, person: What’s wrong with your foot?
Thought bubble, Anna: NOTHING, jackass.
Panel 3: An old man points at Anna as they walk by.
Text: Many times, it felt (and still feels) as if they were really saying that I was too unaware of my different body—and it needed to be pointed out!
Speech bubble, old man: You’re limping!
Speech bubble, Anna: I sure am! Panel 4: A woman with a cane walks as several large sets of googly eyes stare them down.
Text: In general, women’s bodies are so subject to cultural policing that the monitoring of disabled women’s bodies does not seem particularly surprising.
Footnote: See Bartky 1989; the same could also be said of those whose bodies don’t fit “traditional” gender presentation.
Panel 5: Image of the “woman symbol” and a question mark, surrounded by words: fat women, women of color, queer women, poor women, trans women.
Text: Many women who do not fit white, abled, thin, and cisgendered norms of what a woman “should” look like also experience this policing—and the cost of that visibility.
Panel 6: Image of a heart along with the words LOVE YOUR BODY! An asterisk denotes “If it looks and acts like it’s supposed to, that is.”
Text: In recent years, popular feminism has encouraged (young) women to “love” their bodies.
Panel 7: Image of a white woman’s bare stomach.
Text: Body acceptance seems to be catching on…at least for white, young, abled, middle-class straight women.
Panel 8: A delighted feminist talks about body acceptance.
Text: Many “new” feminist activists with media platforms wax poetic on the importance of women’s “self love…” without also considering that they are speaking from a fairly normative position in so doing.
Speech bubble, feminist: I love MY body…therefore, EVERY woman should love theirs!
from p 40 If You Can’t See It, Does That Mean It Isn’t “There?” (Spoiler Alert: No)
Panel 1: Anna in bed, in a lot of pain (again).
Text: The attendant expectation that disability be always public is troubling. For example, I tend to stay home when I am in a lot of pain because I am unable to function in public when my pain level is very high.
Panel 2: Anna talks to another person at a party.
Text: The fact that people are not privy to this display of pain or fatigue (or both) has, perhaps not surprisingly, been used against me.
Speech bubble, person: You can’t possibly be in that much pain! People in severe pain can’t do anything!
Speech bubble, Anna: Uh…
Panel 3: Anna speaks directly to the viewer.
Text: It’s a rather binarist mindset: either you perform ability or total, “real” disability in public – and there’s no in-between.
Speech bubble, Anna: There’s also a reliance on being able to “see” what “real” disability is – and this “realness” must measure up to abled people’s expectations.
Panel 4: Two doofuses, Meathead 1 and Meathead 2, talk about how much they hurt after working out.
Text: While I am concerned that a more fluid notion of disability may inspire some abled people to appropriate or mock the identities of PWD for fun…
Speech bubble, Meathead 1: I’m “disabled” too! My joints hurt after I work out.
Speech bubble, Meathead 2: Ha ha
Panel 5: A person scolds Anna, who is crawling through the frame.
Text: …I also believe that the current “I’ll know it [disability] when I see it” model has its limits.
Speech bubble, person: You’re not really disabled – you can still work!
Speech bubble, Anna: Then give me a job.
Panel 6: A quote from Susan Wendell takes up the entire panel.
Text: Forced passing also carries a large element of social control. As Susan Wendell (2007) writes: “People who are suffering are acknowledged in public or social life only if they can ‘pass’ as not suffering too much and do not talk about it…[this] tends to increase [the belief] that deviation from the conventional expectations of cheerful confidence and enthusiasm is unacceptable.”
Footnote: Wendell 215.
Panel 7: Anna looks forlornly at their “happy” mask.
Text: Those of us who “suffer” in part because of our bodies in pain are usually expected to keep quiet and hide it under a mask of cheerfulness, lest we bother others.
Speech bubble, Anna: This old thing again…
- NERVOUS SYSTEMS: CHAPTER 1–CEREBRAL PALSY
https://annaham.net/2019/03/04/nervous-systems-chapter-1-cerebral-palsy/ - NERVOUS SYSTEMS: CHAPTER 2–ALLERGIES AND ANAPHYLAXIS
https://annaham.net/2019/03/22/nervous-systems-chapter-2-allergies-and-anaphylaxis/ - NERVOUS SYSTEMS: CHAPTER 3–FIBROMYALGIA (AND AFTERWORD)
https://annaham.net/2019/04/23/nervous-systems-chapter-3-fibromyalgia-and-afterword/
Content notes: disability slurs; divorce; emesis; CP, anaphylaxis, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, sexism, normate bigotry
[ETA corrected Anna’s pronouns 12 Mar 2024]
(no subject)
Date: 08/08/2020 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 09/08/2020 12:26 am (UTC)Would you mind expanding on what you meant by this?
(no subject)
Date: 09/08/2020 08:38 pm (UTC)I love comics, and I am particularly drawn to the image plus topic -- the writing is less crucial.
I seek out folks who move beyond the panel border, like Sarah Lightman's The Book of Sarah or Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel's Waves or Tony Pickering's stunning Diabetes Year One.
(I do also read comics about squirrel girls and adventurers but I'm always searching for new ways to teach people about disability so my purchases tend to graphic medicine)
(no subject)
Date: 09/08/2020 03:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 09/08/2020 08:18 pm (UTC)OH NO! Another one! There's no room! No room!