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Every once in a while I read a book that is at once extremely thought provoking and engaging and equally upsetting to experience. This is one of those books. I’m not sure how I feel about it just yet, but I know that the feelings are strong. I don’t even know how to satisfactorily put my thoughts and feelings into words yet, but I feel compelled to share them nonetheless.
I really enjoy the character of Joanne Madsen. I think it is very interesting that despite the payments she receives for having been hit by a bus which allow her to not be homeless and live a life of (relative) luxury, she still is affected by her disability. Before she forced herself to work, without even needing to, she was essentially confined to her apartment, where, even though she has the privilege of a motorized wheelchair, because it is simply more convenient not to leave, she never had to. While, yes, the fact that she was capable of never leaving her apartment and having food delivered to her is a fact of privilege, the way in which she is still disconnected from the world provides an interesting look into the fact that regardless of class, disability will always affect others.
Tiny bit for the end but I hate Michelle Volkmann and the way she dehumanizes the people around her for a paycheck and I especially hate that the people she has go to the ILLC don’t always even necessarily want to but she coerces/manipulates them for the sake of $300 dollars. The (TW) sexual assault scene made me throw up.

Trigger warning: Sexual assault

The second section of the reading starts with Ricky talking about sex and locker room talks. Another houseparent, Jerry, makes him uncomfortable with how aggressive his comments are. He ends his section saying “I never told her about Jerry the sex fiend. It’s probably no big deal. Guys like that are all talk for the most part.”(63) In the next section, Mia reveals that Jerry has been sneaking into her room and raping her.

Nussbaum is exposing the reader to the reality of how terribly people can be treated in care facilities, the environment is the perfect hunting ground for predators like Jerry. There are warning signs that something is wrong with Mia; Jimmie finds her bleeding when she already had her period recently, she is constantly tired, and she’s cutting herself off from those she’s closest too. However, no one notices or is trained to notice those warning signs. 

Jerry tells Mia “He say nobody gonna belief me. They never belief me”(66) and there is sadly truth to that. A child died there with no real investigation, and no one even believes that Mia needs a powerchair. Jerry is given the benefit of the doubt for his creepy and inappropriate behavior because guys like that are thought to be harmless. There is no protection for these children, there is more protection around who gets to use the elevator. These fake safety guidelines highlight that the ILLC is more concerned with protecting themselves from lawsuits than they are with protecting the kids from predators. 

I believe that this was incredibly important to add to the story because these are still issues that disabled people face today. Even if it’s not as extreme as sexual assault(though that still happens) institutions still don’t take proper care of the people in their charges. Rather than sending students to a nurse when they act out because of a medical issue they are sent to the time out room out of spite. The teacher even encourages Ricky to leave the kid alone (which is illegal). 

Even the title ‘Good Kings Bad Kings’ is in reference to a case surrounding the death of a disabled kid on a bus who was held down by only one aide and eventually suffocated. The aide said to the kid before he died “I can be a good king or I can be a bad king”. Many of the aids in this story view themselves as kings ruling over these kids when they are really hired to serve them and their needs. The ILLC is already understaffed and funded and yet they keep trying to cut costs and add kids to beds. The for-profit is not working when it comes to long term care, especially when the children aren’t taught independence or money management. In the end, most of them are on track to be shipped from one facility to the next, never given the opportunity to become independent.

I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work. Elizabeth Wruck

In Susan Nussbaum’s Good Kings Bad Kings, the story is set up so that every chapter, the point of view changes from one character to the next. In doing that, the author has given the reader a really great opportunity to get to know the characters really well. In this short reading response I want to analyze how Joanne Madsen’s position as a white woman with a disability in possession of a humble wealth and Michelle Volkmann’s as another white woman, but who has had no experience with a disability of any kind make it almost impossible for them to experience the same kinds of hardships like that of Cheri or Yessenía. 

Joanne Madsen, who was hit by a bus at an earlier point in her life received a sum of money from the CTA due to the accident that left her to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She decides that after spending some time in her apartment doing little to nothing that she will begin work at the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Center (or commonly referred to the ILLC by the characters) to keep herself busy. Joanne refers to herself as the “Rockefeller compared to 99 percent of the rest of the disabled people on earth” (Nussbaum 8). In a few ways, she is. Not only is she not homeless at the age of 16, but she has many resources that other characters do not. While most, if not all, of the kids at the ILLC have manual wheelchairs, Joanne has a power wheelchair so that she does not have to wheel herself around all the time, which she describes as a whole other challenge in and of itself. At the end of the day, while Joanne is free to return to her apartment, which represents something almost like freedom, the kids at the ILLC are forced to stay, be told when to eat and when to go to bed-which makes the ILLC seem almost like a prison. Of course, Joanne being disabled makes her life challenging, but she is lucky because of what she was born into. If it weren’t for the money she received after her accident or the family she had, she would more than likely be in a situation similar to a lot of the kids that go through the ILLC. Which begs the question, do race and class still make an appearance when disability is being discussed? The short answer: of course they do. 

Michelle Volkmann is seemingly nice at first and although she does not have a disability herself, she works with and is around the people with disabilities community a lot of the time. During her first chapter the reader is given a chance to see what Michelle actually thinks of when she is interacting with a person who has a disability. “I’m thinking, “Okay, whatever.” She has this way of talking that’s like jerky. I don’t mean like “you’re a jerk” but like her speech came out stiff sounding.” (Nussbaum 27).Reading this, I felt uneasy. She uses terms like ‘crazy’, ‘handicapped’, and when she describes someone who has schizophrenia it comes off as severely outdated. The way she clearly only thinks about the people she recruits as the $300 she receives for each person is nauseating. Yes, of course the job she does is very important to the field she works in, but one look at her motives and true opinion she would (and should) be removed from her position at once. Michelle has never had to deal with a disability personally- that reader knows of so far- so of course she is only going to act ignorant. Michelle is also, though not expressed in the novel, white. In being white and not a person with a disability, she is completely blinded from the hardship and challenges people of color with disabilities face every day. Not only is she blind from it, but she hardly takes any time to act like she cares about the people she recruits for the ILLC. 

Joanne Madsen’s privilege and access to wealth has provided the most comfortable way of life that could have been provided for her. Michelle Volkmann’s privilege and utter disregard for others has bred ignorance to the community she claims she works so hard for. Both women understand that the lives of those in the community are quite difficult, neither will ever come close to grasping the experiences that other characters in the novel have to deal with every day. 

Word count: 754

I pledge: Kellie Bowman 

“Plato, Again” is one of the more poignant depictions of the intersectionality of oppression that I have seen. It successfully shows the ways discrimination based on race, gender, and the functioning of one’s body interact in various ways. It focuses on the discrimination Caroline Moore faces after beginning treatment for her breast cancer, although the discrimination is not isolated to her illness, but also to her race and gender.

Throughout the piece, Moore makes reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. To those around her, living in the shadows, Moore’s shadow is the only part of her that they see. Symbolically, her “shadow” is her cancer; no one in her work environment is able to look beyond her illness to interact with her in the same way they did beforehand. She notes multiple times on the ways people treat her differently compared to before knowledge of her cancer was available. Her boss, Bill Densk, had previously never paid her so much attention that she felt it necessary to examine him closely enough to have a good idea of what he looked like; she was a respected employee with a master’s degree in computer programming and enough experience and knowledge in her work to put her into a managerial position. Yet, now that she has begun treatment for her sickness, it is as if Densk has suddenly noticed that she is not just a good worker, but a black woman, and one with an illness. During their meeting, he touched the place where her breast was removed, a clear violation of her personal space and an act of sexual harassment. However, there is a palpable shift in the dynamic between the two, and it is clear Densk no longer cares if he oversteps his boundaries. Before, she was a black woman, but one capable of doing her job without interruption. After being removed from the workplace by her treatments, she is less valuable to the company, as she will be removed again in the future, with less free time to dedicate to her position, and so Densk no longer sees her as vital. She is now simply supplemental, all due to her illness.

Lori, another character in the story, unsubtly changes her behavior towards Caroline. Previously a shy spoken, quiet woman who treated her with respect, Lori becomes progressively more comfortable in exerting her authority over Caroline, who has been demoted to being beneath her. This showed what I thought was an interesting dichotomy; I had expected Lori to be more sympathetic towards Caroline, because they are both women in a male-dominated workplace. However, Caroline’s absence during her treatment has allowed Lori to rise in power within the environment, power she is not afraid of exerting over Caroline. It seemed almost as if Lori was transformed into a different person than Caroline previously knew. They no longer had the solidarity of both being women, because Caroline was, in her eyes, no longer another woman. To Lori, a disabled woman is almost a different being entirely, one that she feels no sympathy or need for solidarity towards. Lori is more than happy to stay within the cave, because she benefits directly from Caroline’s stepping outside of it.

At no point is the allegory of the cave more prevalent than in the beginning of the story, when Caroline is watching young adults playing in the nice weather, and she observes that a young black man is “laughing too hard to succeed”. Caroline believes he is only seeing the shadows of the world because his laughter must mean that he does not fully grasp the harshness of a world in which an illness can allow others to take everything from you. So jaded by her experiences is she that she cannot perceive another’s happiness without understanding it as ignorance. Her own harsh reality, and the shift in the way others have treated her because of it, has irrevocably changed her idea of what truth is, and her own life in general.

Word Count: 667
I pledge: Aspen Garritson

In this response, I want to talk about independence in Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People. Hulga is portrayed as independent in her own right but also as reliant on the kindness of others. (Note: I think it is worth referring to Hulga by her chosen name, although she resents Mrs. Freeman for using it, viewing the act as an intrusion on her privacy.) I will analyze independence through the eyes of Mrs. Hopewell, the Bible salesman, and Hulga herself.

Much of Hulga’s perceived dependence (and inability to live on her own) is cast upon her by her mother, Mrs. Hopewell. Mrs. Hopewell routinely infantilizes Hulga, forgetting – or refusing to remember – that the latter is “thirty-two years old and highly educated.” Mrs. Hopewell takes Hulga’s bitterness at having to live at home as being evidence of this childishness; likewise, Hulga’s impressive accomplishment of receiving her PhD in philosophy is seen as both unbecoming of a woman (girl) and economically and socially inefficient, a “flaw” that frequently comes up in our discussion of disability studies and society’s negative perception towards disabled people. The narrator of Good Country People repeatedly reminds us of this infantilization by referring to Hulga, who is well into adulthood, as “the girl” throughout the story. Somewhat ironically, Mrs. Freeman seems to perceive Hulga’s abilities and personhood more than Mrs. Hopewell – however, Mrs. Freeman nonetheless views Hulga as an object of intrigue rather than her own person.

On the other hand, “Manley Pointer,” the Bible salesman, appears to view Hulga not in conjunction with her mother or as a child, but as someone whom he is attracted to. Of course, to the reader he appears guilty of disability porn, calling Hulga “brave” despite having no reason to believe that is the case. Of course, ultimately we learn this is all an act, and that he’s fully aware of Hulga’s strengths and weaknesses and exploits them to his advantage. From Hulga’s perspective, she is smarter than he is, but she is also intrigued by the prospect of romantic attraction – her first, as far as the reader knows. Pointer also goads her into climbing the ladder in the barn by calling into question her independence and physical abilities. She seeks to prove him wrong, and in doing so winds up in an extremely vulnerable position where Pointer is able to escape and to leave her trapped.

Hulga views herself as more scholarly and more insightful than anyone in her life – she seems to be right, but that fact goes unnoticed and unappreciated by everyone else. She resents that her physical disabilities have prevented her from moving away from her country home. In her day to day life, however, she’s perfectly confident and comfortable with her wooden leg and navigating her physical environment. At the end of the story, when Pointer reveals his con and steals her leg – seen here not as a mobility assist but as part of her, much like how some disabled people view their wheelchairs as an extension of their physical body – I worry for how her life will be after the incident. When Pointer removes the leg, she realizes she feels totally dependent on him without it, and she’s right. She’s functionally under his control. I worry that that experience will shape how she views her own self and her ability to survive independently.

Word count: 564

I pledge

“Plato, Again” focuses on the blatant discrimination of Caroline Moore, and enables the reader to follow Caroline’s experience as a disabled, black woman. Caroline reflects on the social and political aspects of Plato’s work, specifically the “Allegory of the Cave,” in three separate settings, including the outside world, inside a working environment, and inside a doctor’s office. Caroline’s ongoing cancer treatment and resulting side effects give her a perspective that the people operating around her are not aware of, and are to0 ignorant to comprehend. “Plato, Again” reveals through Plato’s allegory how disabled individuals are often cast as static observers, silent and invisible characters that live in the shadows of their own lives.

Caroline’s experiece of sexual harrasment and disability discrimination, as mentioned on page 52, are prominant ways in which she is made to be an invisible and unheard spectator in a work setting. Eyes are an important thematic element in the entirety of “Plato, Again,” and even more so during Caroline’s work place, as she is the simultaneously the witness, the object of the male gaze, and somebody who is glanced away from entirely. Bill Densk, Caroline’s boss, wrongfully makes Caroline a victim of sexual misconduct and her disability.  Bill, a white male in a position of power, asks inappropriate and uncomfortable questions in regards to Caroline’s mastectomy scars, stares directly where her disability is physically visible, and even touches in the place where her breast used to be before her surgery took place. Bill already has trouble correlating the fact that Caroline can be a woman of color and an intelligent, capable individual with a background in computer science and literature.  It is not computable, and not worth understanding to Bill that Caroline can be an intellectual, disabled, woman of color in a work space. This makes her an object to him, one that he can and will eventually replace, as we see through the stages of Caroline’s demotion throughout her cancer treatment. Caroline is unseen in a work setting through the eyes of her coworkers. As stated on page 54, people are in a hurry to get past Caroline. A form of disability discrimination can be ignorance or the dismision of disability, whether physical on non-physical. By people choosing to glance away from Caroline, or pretend like they have another task at hand, they are not recognizing her a whole, authentic, human being, worthy of their line of sight. Nobody takes the time to see Caroline deeper the surface level, she is only ever seen sexually, in a pitiful manner, or glanced away from. 

“Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. I see.” (“Allegory of the Cave”) 

Caroline Moore in neither outside of Plato’s cave, nor chained inside, instead she represents the speaker of this allegory, aware of the dangerous yet freeing implications of this allegory, due to her view of the world through a disabled lens.  The reader first learns that is Caroline watching people play in a college town, dancing figures outside of the cave, oblivious to the Truth, to her Truth. On page 52, she connects watching two college boys interact with one another to watching a home video. Here, she is a narrator, critically analyzing important details in a story that have yet to be discovered by other characters. In Caroline’s work and hospital setting, she is describing the inside of the cave, as the speaker would. People are chained to the wall, watching the puppets move around them. They have not attempted, nor chosen, to see the Truth, her Truth, so they remain in the dark. 

Symbolically, Caroline relates herself to bird, either being a prodded nest (pg. 53), or a caught bird (pg. 55), this usage of the bird, can be representative of feminity, fragility, and most significantly, freedom. However, this correlates to Plato’s description of unattainable freedom in “Allegory of the Cave.” “Plato, Again,” ends as Caroline is watching female coworkers, “standing back from the mouth of the cave” (pg. 56). Which, yet again, represents her recognition as of the world outside and inside of the cave, and a freedom forever lost on them.

This short story is a step towards recognition, firstly, because Kuusisto is attempting to create an empathetic space, rather than just sympathetic understanding from the reader through the discrimination Caroline is continuously faced with.  The author also opens a door for awareness through introducing disability through a familiar, and though provoking concept. Plato’s philosophical ideas were ultimately ignored and berated, his words and very existence were invisible to the people he preached to. His brilliance, dismissed, until he became nothing but background noise (Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” – Alex Gendler). Caroline’s character is a parallel to Plato’s own being, as she is not seen as an able, disabled individual. This is made evident through Kuusisto’s writing, and therefore reveals how disabled individuals are more often than not, cast as static characters in their own lives, but aware of Truth.

Word Count: 871

I pledge: Alyssa Brown

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