Seven. Scraped knees and
princess skirts, and anger. Running outside—didn't want to stay in and read,
there was nothing to read—and if I ran into anything the corkbottle
glasses would save my eye, and there would always be anger. New friends, new
teachers—we'd just moved—new town, didn't like the town, didn't want to leave
the old one, and there were all these other new people in school, new braille
teacher, and new woman who read my braille. Didn't like them, didn't want to
talk to them, missed the old people, and everything was different now,
everything was different ...
And I was different. Not
different since the move, different since ... forever. What to do, what to do
with a world of people who could go to the library and I ... I could read the
same five braille books in the school library, again and again, looking for
some extra piece of story or information in their fourteen pages each. Could
have my parents read me chapter books, but it wasn't the same, wasn't the same,
and it wasn't fair, wasn't RIGHT! Wasn't right that they could all see to run
and climb and I was starting to be afraid, starting to wonder what happens if I
don't see, if I fall, if I crash. IT's NOT FAIR that the world is large and
full of small things, full of shapes and colors and things behind glass, full
of words words everywhere words that I just want to read and IT's NOT FAIR.
And so I cried. And so I
screamed, threw tantrums. Because I was a selfish little seven-year-old, and
because I wanted what I had never had, but it seemed like everyone else did.
But little girls are not
supposed to be angry. Ah, no. "Use your words," they told me, and,
"Calm down," and "Go outside," and, "Well if you're
going to be like that ..." So I learned that pretty, white, well-spoken
girls and young women get what they want by articulate asking, not by anger.
I am glad I learned it. I
am glad to know what diplomacy and empathy and compromise are. I am glad.
But I learned more than
that. I learned to smile when what I wanted to do was slap. I learned to be
content with less than I deserved. I learned that "equal access" is
only so equal and only so accessible. I bought contentment at the price of
anger.
And now I'm angry.
I learned this week that a
book about disability studies, which I downloaded from Bookshare, one of my
favorite accessible book websites, is incomplete. It is missing an entire
chapter, and the referential text for an entire other chapter. This is because
Bookshare received their source material directly from the publisher, who
apparently chose not to include this material in the PDF which they sell online
and make available to accessible sites.
Who the HELL's bright idea
was this? Is chapter seven a special privilege reserved for sighted people?
Were the poems of chapter five so artfully arranged that it would have been a
sin and a crime to convert them from images into plain, readable text? I
deserve the same text as anyone else. So does anyone who downloads an
accessible text from Bookshare because of a reading-related disability, and
anyone who decides to buy an online PDF instead of a physical book, whether
because of accessibility, financial reasons, environmental concerns, or any
damn reason at all. I can't believe I actually have to say this. It's a book
about disability studies, God damn it, and I, a disabled person, cannot read
all of it.
I have grown up too ready
to accept inequality for myself. I am too ready to believe that if I don't have
the entirety of a book, or if the braille menu at the restaurant is always out
of date or not there, or if the busy road I must cross has no audible crosswalk—these
things just happen. I suspect I am not alone. It's much easier to accept than
to fight. You don't get angry. You sigh and say, "Well, that's just the
way the world works."
No. It isn't. This is not
the way the world works. This is the way the world fails to work. Fails
to work for me, and a whole host of other people with disabilities. And, for
that matter, our world doesn't tend to work very well for you if you are a
person of color, queer, trans, an immigrant, poor, female, or any of a number
of other things I could name. There's life being hard and unfair, and then
there's living in a society that was actually planned without considering
people like you.
Later, I will be more
evenhanded about this. Later, I will learn why the publisher of this book of
mine made the choices they did, and perhaps I will be satisfied. I will
politely and reasonably request an answer, and a resolution of the problem. I
will admit that the publisher, and the world, is not and should not be beholden
to my desires, and that given that society as a whole actually has very little
idea what most disabled people need, a little education can go a long way. I
will also admit that I am in an incredibly privileged place in order for this
to be what I'm angry about.
Later, I will think these
things. But there must also be a time for anger. My anger is loud and fierce,
and it gives me strength. My anger reminds me what injustice looks like, even
in so small a thing as a single book. My anger knows, as I do not, that even though
that's what started this, it's never just about a single book. There is a
furious seven-year-old inside me who wants to throw a temper tantrum, and I'm
inclined to let her. Anger, despite what I have always been told, is
productive. Anger gets things started when it's easier to just let things be. I
am sick of just letting things be, because if I don't say and do something
about them, they will only continue to be: be unfair, be unequal, be wrong. I
do not intend, or wish, to use my anger as a weapon against Bookshare, or this
publisher, or anyone at all. My anger is a tool best used within myself. It is
energy, it is drive, it is power. It is, perhaps, community building, if it's
sparks are caught by others.
Deep within me, a
seven-year-old screams, "IT's NOT FAIR!" and I scream with her. I am
a pretty, white, well-spoken young woman throwing an articulate temper tantrum,
and you know something?
It feels amazing.
