Don't Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back

For psychotherapist, painter, feminist, filmmaker, writer, and disability activist Harilyn Rousso, hearing well intentioned people tell her, You're so inspirational! is patronizing, not complimentary. In her empowering and at times confrontational memoir, Dont Call Me Inspirational, Rousso who has cerebral palsy, describes overcoming the prejudice against disabilitynot overcoming disability. She addresses the often absurd and ignorant attitudes of strangers, friends, and family. Rousso also examines her own prejudice toward her disabled body, and portrays the healing effects of intimacy and creativity, as well as her involvement with the disability rights community. She intimately reveals herself with honesty and humour and measures her personal growth as she goes from passing to embracing and claiming her disability as a source of pride, positive identity, and rebellion. A collage of images about her life, rather than a formal portrait, Dont Call Me Inspirational celebrates Roussos wise, witty, productive, outrageous life, disability and all. 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, co-editor of Double Jeopardy: Addressing Gender Equity in Special Education and author of Disabled, Female, and Proud! She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
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!

Review :
"[The] author's willingness to connect disability bias and sexism, as well as the non-linear essay format refreshing. The lives of people with disabilities rarely fit into a conventional timeline, so the non-chronological approach is a good choice overall. The title is a special gift to women like myself who feel that we get far more credit for continuing to exist than we do for anything we accomplish... Overall, this is a clear and thoughtful set of essays that made me want to read more...It really makes you think."--Breathe & Shadow, Summer 2013 "I've known Harilyn Rousso as a powerful activist and gifted artist, but with this revelatory book, she becomes something even more rare: a storyteller who conveys her uniqueness, and so helps us to discover our own. This book is irresistible to read, honest, insightful and universal." Gloria Steinem "An inspirational affirmation of the unique worth of every individual." Kirkus Reviews, December 15th 2012 "Rousso is an activist, artist, educator, social worker, psychotherapist, writer, painter and advocate who has worked in the disability rights field. The book follows her journey from 'passing' - pretending that she didn't have cerebral palsy - to embracing her disability. In the late '70s, she began exploring her disability identity, and she writes with honesty and power." Jewish Woman, Winter 2012 "This collection of 52 short essays and meditative fragments is aptly described by the author, a psychotherapist, disabilities activist, and artist, as 'a collage or a series of images' rather than a more formal memoir... When she writes of the psychotherapy institute where she was training asking her to leave, believing that a person with her disability would 'distress [her] psychotherapy clients, causing them to flee - or at least to ask for another, more "normal" therapist,' she, and her reader, recognize the prejudice she has faced... [Rousso's] painful honesty is affecting." Publishers Weekly, December 2012 "[E]xtraordinary... Memoirs succeed when they provide readers with a gut feeling of what the author's life is like, and Rousso indeed opens the door to her world... [She] writes with intelligence, passion, humor and spunk." - New York Jewish Week "Rousso confronts her disability head-on in this engaging memoir. Sometimes emotional, often blunt, Rousso recounts what it was like growing up with cerebral palsy in New York City... This memoir is comprised of essays, poems, and personal memories, the combination making for an unusual, compelling read." - Library Journal "Rousso uses this collection of brief essays and a few poems to share her beliefs and render her journey from dependent daughter to independent activist... [P]age by page, she makes the case for herself, to herself - and to other disabled women. 'There is no quick fix for a lifetime of selfhatred,' Rousso writes. 'Only slow healing.'"--Bust, June/July 2013 "The author is a disability activist, feminist, psychotherapist, writer and painter, and in her memoir she describes with both humor and sincerity her progress from just "passing" to embracing her disability as a source of pride."-Ms Magazine "Without being polemical, humorless or pompous, Rousso lets readers see that you can have a vital, rich life because of, not despite, a disability. How great it would have been if I and so many others had known this when we were young. One can't help but wonder how helpful this knowledge would have been to my folks, who at my birth, were told that because I was blind, I'd 'just be a vegetable.' Don't Call Me Inspirational is a must-read not only for folks with disabilities but for nondisabled people of all stripes, such as family members, friends, co-workers, teachers, doctors and allies. One book can't change the world. But Rousso's work, with its engaging, refreshingly non-'inspirational' writing, could potentially change the hearts of millions."-Independence Today "Don't Call Me Inspirational is a frank, forthright, and insightful memoir by the feminist disability activist, painter, psychotherapist, and former New York City Human Rights Commissioner Harilyn Rousso... Overall, the book advances disability activist and scholarly investigations of embodiment, sexuality, and what it means to 'claim disability' personally and collectively... It is also an invaluable asset to the archives of feminist disability activism... [Rousso's] writing is simultaneously bold, insightful, and humorous in confronting her own vulnerabilities, insecurities, human failings, and internalized ableism, while using them to map underlying social injustices and the collective remedies needed." - Disability Studies Quarterly "Call a disabled person inspirational before you actually know them, you're mucking in stereotype. That's one of many pops of insight in "Don't Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back" by psychotherapist Harilyn Rousso... a very intimate book." - Boston Globe "I highly recommend [Rousso's] book for the exploration of how a disability...can lead one to feel less than human and limit hope, imagination, and opportunity... Her individual experiences help elucidate both disabling and enabling processes and can help others appreciate the daily struggles to build identity and maintain dignity in the face of multiple oppressions. Ms. Rousso is an everyday heroine." - Affilia "Rousso offers a genuine reflection on growing up in a society that struggles to recognize the value of people with disabilities... She simultaneously grants readers an in-depth analysis of the feminist movement and its relationship with the disability rights movement, while questioning society's views of sex and sexuality... Both hilarious and solemn at times, this [memoir] offers an intriguing perspective on our society's structure and the varying roles of people with disabilities, and I cannot recommend it enough." - Disability Rights Galaxy "This memoir is one of the most vibrant, refreshing and important explorations of the 'lived experience' of being a disabled woman that I have ever read... Rousso beautifully describes her life experiences and reflections on her time from east to west coast in the USA (Washington to New York and Boston thus far); she has an engaging humour that makes the book pacey enough to read in one sitting or ideal to pick up in different places and re-read over time. Yet, through this accessible contemporary chronicle, she also manages to demonstrate how disability and gender connect and struggle throughout childhood, teenage anxiety, love, body image, identity and womanhood, without becoming angst-ridden, flippant or overly political... [A]n important volume that will stand the test of time." - Disability & Society, Vol. 29, Issue 4, 2014