Book #119 of 2020:
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner
At turns inspirational, eye-opening, and infuriating, activist Judith Heumann’s account of her lifelong fight to enshrine civil rights protections for people with disabilities deserves to be read widely. It’s easy to not think about matters of accessibility that don’t affect you personally, and to take for granted the accommodations that are more commonplace today, but Heumann and her co-author Kristen Joiner swiftly take us into her position and show us the barriers she’s faced at every moment on the way to that slim measure of progress. (Among others: being denied a teaching license, barred from boarding airplanes, and even unable to physically enter many buildings due solely to her use of a wheelchair.)
Writing at age 72, the polio-stricken child of Holocaust survivors shares her story both to preserve history — like how she helped lead the sit-in of a government building to demand passage of Section 504, an important piece of anti-discrimination legislation — and to emphasize how expanding equal access is in the interest of all society. Since anyone could acquire a disability, and since everyone will if we live long enough, it’s in our own self-interest as well as simple justice to demand that equality now. Luckily we have folks like Judy modeling the way to achieve it.
★★★★☆
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 