{"id":1889,"date":"2020-03-24T03:31:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T03:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2020-03-24T03:31:04","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T03:31:04","slug":"kellies-response-to-susan-nussbaums-good-kings-bad-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/kellies-response-to-susan-nussbaums-good-kings-bad-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"Kellie’s response to Susan Nussbaum’s Good Kings Bad Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Susan Nussbaum\u2019s Good Kings Bad Kings<\/em>, 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\u2019s position as a white woman with a disability in possession of a humble wealth and Michelle Volkmann\u2019s 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 Yessen\u00eda.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cRockefeller compared to 99 percent of the rest of the disabled people on earth\u201d (Nussbaum 8). In a few ways, she is. Not only is she not<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201cI\u2019m thinking, \u201cOkay, whatever.\u201d She has this way of talking that\u2019s like jerky. I don\u2019t mean like \u201cyou\u2019re a jerk\u201d but like her speech came out stiff sounding.\u201d (Nussbaum 27).Reading this, I felt uneasy. She uses terms like \u2018crazy\u2019, \u2018handicapped\u2019, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tJoanne Madsen\u2019s privilege and access to wealth has provided the most comfortable way of life that could have been provided for her. Michelle Volkmann\u2019s 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.\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word count: 754<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pledge: Kellie Bowman\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Susan Nussbaum\u2019s 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 … Continue reading “Kellie’s response to Susan Nussbaum’s Good Kings Bad Kings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcJhts-ut","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1891,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/1891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}