Damn Bunch of Cripples

Damn Bunch of Cripples
Author: Lew Shaver
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2003-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0595292542

I was sitting in a small upstairs room attempting to write this narrative of my education in disability awareness. For over 30 years I have been involved in working with individuals with disabilities as a coach and administrator on the intercollegiate, national and international levels. When I started this journey, at a small, Midwestern University, I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. Now that I have traveled this educational path I have come to realize that it may have been one of the most important learning experiences of my life, an experience I feel needs to be shared. In putting this narrative together, one very real issue I struggled with was how to deal with the present climate of political correctness. My decision was to tell the stories as I remember them, in the language as I remember. To do differently would change and compromise the actual experience. Thus, this is a sharing of feelings and experiences that a coach and his athletes spent in timeless hours in a gym practicing and competing, of thousands of miles traveled throughout the United States and beyond, and days and nights spent together in laughter and frustration.

Hoop Dreams on Wheels

Hoop Dreams on Wheels
Author: Ronald Berger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2010-08-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135890765

Hoop Dreams on Wheels is a life-history study of wheelchair athletes associated with a premier collegiate wheelchair basketball program. The book, which grapples with the intersection of biography and history in society, situates the study in broader context with background on the history and sociology of disability and disability sports. It documents the development and evolution of the basketball program and tells the individual life stories of the athletes, highlighting the formative interpersonal and institutional experiences that influenced their agentive actions and that helped them achieve success in wheelchair sports. It also examines divisions within the disability community that reveal both empowering and disempowering aspects of competitive wheelchair athletics, and it explores some of the complexities and dilemmas of disability identity in contemporary society. The book is intended to be read by a general audience as well as by students in college courses on disability, sports, social problems, deviance, medical sociology and anthropology, and introductory sociology. It also will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of disability, sociology of sports, and medical humanities, as well as life-history researchers and professionals in the fields of physical education, therapeutic recreation, and rehabilitative counseling.

Wheelchair Warrior

Wheelchair Warrior
Author: Melvin Juette
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2008-03-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1592134769

Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a shooting was "both the worst and best thing that happened" to him. This memoir re-constructs the defining moments of his life with the assistance of sociologist Ronald Berger. It is bracketed by Berger's introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative in proper sociological context.

I’Ll Be Damned

I’Ll Be Damned
Author: Ralph Wedgeworth
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1532087705

Detective Kat Gonzales uses a variety of modern forensic sciences and good old-fashioned police tactics to solve high profile murders in Corpus Christi, Texas. Peace is short lived, however, as the homicide rate sky rockets and a team of cunning criminals commit a bank robbery, a jewelry store heist, and the kidnapping of several infants from a local church nursery. The Texas Rangers and FBI are called in to help Kat and her fellow officers track down these elusive thieves. Using standard law enforcement strategies fail to provide any clues, so the team adopts alternative methods, involving new technology and thinking outside the box. Despite the lack of tangible evidence, Kat refuses to give up. Just when the pieces seem to fall into place, Kat and Texas Ranger Jay Dee Baker are thrown an unexpected curveball that sends them in a new direction with a new mission.

Trees Without Wind

Trees Without Wind
Author: Rui Li
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0231531044

Unfolding in the tense years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Trees Without Wind takes place in a remote Shanxi village in which a rare affliction has left the residents physically stunted. Director Liu, an older revolutionary and local commune head, becomes embroiled in a power struggle with Zhang Weiguo, a young ideologue who believes he is the model of a true revolutionary. Complicating matters is a woman named Nuanyu, who, like Zhang Weiguo and Director Liu, is an outsider untouched by the village's disease. "Wedded" to all of the male villagers, Nuanyu lives a polyandrous lifestyle based on necessity and at odds with the puritanical idealism of the Cultural Revolution. The deformed villagers, representing the manipulated masses of China, become pawns in the Party representatives' factional infighting. Director Liu and Zhang Weiguo's explosive tug-of-war is part of a larger battle among politics, self-interest, and passion gripping a world undone by ideological extremism. A collectively told narrative powered by distinctive subjectivities, Trees Without Wind is a milestone in the fictional treatment of a horrific event.

The Cripple and His Talismans

The Cripple and His Talismans
Author: Anosh Irani
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2005-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1565128605

Prepare to enter a world where the norms of human behavior—even the rules governing time and gravity—are set on their heads. This dark and wry fable begins with the narrator waking up and discovering he is missing an arm. He has no idea how he lost it or how to find it—but as he searches the chaotic, often surreal streets of Bombay, he meets an absurd and marvelous cast of characters who offer him clues: a woman selling rainbows, a beggar living under an egg cart, a coffin maker who builds finger-sized caskets, a giant who lives underwater, a homeless boy riding the rails. They all lead him to Baba Rakhu, master of the underworld, who will reveal the story of his lost arm—for a price. Funny and wise, violent and tender, The Cripple and His Talismans is an impressive debut. A bestseller in Canada, it has been compared to the works of Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carroll, and Salman Rushdie.

Becoming Disabled

Becoming Disabled
Author: Jan Doolittle Wilson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2021-06-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793643709

Using an autoethnographic approach, as well as multiple first-person accounts from disabled writers, artists, and scholars, Jan Doolittle Wilson describes how becoming disabled is to forge a new consciousness and a radically new way of viewing the world. In Becoming Disabled, Wilson examines disability in ways that challenge dominant discourses and systems that shape and reproduce disability stigma and discrimination. It is to create alternative meanings that understand disability as a valuable human variation, that embrace human interdependency, and that recognize the necessity of social supports for individual flourishing and happiness. From her own disability view of the world, Wilson critiques the disabling impact of language, media, medical practices, educational systems, neoliberalism, mothering ideals, and other systemic barriers. And she offers a powerful vision of a society in which all forms of human diversity are included and celebrated and one in which we are better able to care for ourselves and each other.