I analyzed the poems “Misfit” and “Perspectives” and talked about how society’s view on autism is limited, but these poems give readers a chance to understand.
Author: jhopkin3
Breakout Group section 2 4/27
J. Faith Hopkins’s Major Project
(Also includes my comic)
breakout group 4/8/21
Faith, David, Lily, Karlie
Faith: what Yessie did was irresponsible but I think she handled that very well
Karlie: a lot of development that kind of flip flopped a bit. I fear what she did is gonna keep Jimmie from adopting her
David: I think the ending hinted that she did. My response is just anger. “Oh yes the death was tragic but a reasonable amount of deaths”
Kalie: “how many deaths are reasonable?” “however many we have” really?
David: complete dehumanisation . Also shocked Teddy died.
Karlie: I knew something was going to go wrong, I was expecting it.
Faith: It had to happen though, to trigger what Yessie did with the protest
Karlie: Worried for Yessie at first because of what the repercussions are, but then more people joined.
Faith: I liked how Access Now joined in.
Karlie: Mia started supporting herself which was really cool.
Faith: Yeah, and we found out she was abused by her mother
Karlie: Reading that upset me.
Foss: Do you think she is getting to a place where she can talk about it? Willing to confront her past? Silver-lining.
Karlie: she is developing a mature view on the world and at a young age, that’s disheartening
David: One character Michelle had a weird ending, like no payoff?
Karlie: I liked her ending, she seemed one-dimensional at first. She became more human when she saw the wrong doings and quit
David: instead of empathy she had apathy.
Faith: I wanted her to do more about it, but I’m glad she quit and realized her job wasn’t helping people.
David: when she thought about reporting the conversation of the boss and then said “it doesn’t matter” that bothered me.
Karlie: What did you think of Jimmie adopting Yessie?
Faith: I liked how she saw her as an adult not her child, just roommates.
Karlie: Keeping the friendship alive
Faith: the way Teddy died didn’t sit well with me. Like shows disabled people can’t do things on their own after all.
Karlie: there was something wrong with the pipes too.
David: She could have checked it before leaving though.
New breakout room
Faith: the WHO defined disability and impairment as a disadvantage in the workplace and that irritates me because how are they supposed to get jobs if no one will advocate for them? They need work, too.
David: 79% of disbaled adults prefer to work but only 38% get to work. Even with the ideas of “no discrimination” in the workplace there is still a barrier for them.
Faith: it sucks that they are three times more likely to be below the poverty line
Karlie: a lot of things in that article annoyed me. Just goes to show that our society is not willing to work with disability
David: ableism is ignored and not dealt with upfront these numbers, aren’t presented often enough. The main thing that stuck out to me were the numbers. They are completely brand new to me. A severe lack of information to the public.
Foss: A lot of these stats are viewed from the census. Especially hard for disabled people from ethnic backgrounds because they find themselves incarcerated school to prison pipeline
breakout group 2
Brianna, Faith, Arden, Lily
Arden: I hate Jerry.
Faith: My favorite has been Ricky; he gives off an in-between perspective where he isn’t sure how they should change but knows it’s wrong what he’s witnessing
Lily: Joanne has been my favorite; she inputs and questions things that should change. The electric wheelchairs are not applicable to everyone.
Arden: All the employees “it is what it is” and “we’re teaching them” but they aren’t, they are teaching them to be in an institution their whole life.
Arden: I really liked Jimmie. I like how she’s trying to be friends with Yessie and takes her out to the concert. So far a good person.
Brianna: Joanne is my favorite because she appears to be the protagonist even though there’s multiple characters. I would like to see more from Yessie.
Arden: So far Michelle isn’t great. She says anything to get recruits even if it might not be the best for them (like Cherri’s case).
Faith: I think it’s odd that Joanne is the only employee with a disability and can relate to their situation. Do you think jimmie was given a good character role because she is a lesbian and therefore can relate to their treatment (kinda)?
Brianna: kind of like the island of misfit toys when they can all be different but understand each other from the treatment they received
Arden: Do we know what Joanne was like before her disability? If she was not disabled, would she be fighting this hard for their rights?
Brianna: And that’s kinda the sad way to see it; people don’t care about certain things until it affects them somehow. She wouldn’t have been exposed at this level (childhood).
Arden: I’m glad she doesn’t have self-loathing on her disability. She doesn’t hate herself, it’s just a part of her life now.
Faith: she’s definitely a good role model; she has a job and now a relationship with Ricky.
Arden: Ricky is thankfully not sexualizing her disability, he clearly states he loves all of her.
Breakout room 2 section 2 3/9
Arden Jones, Faith Hopkins, Lily Sportsman, Nathalie Luciano, Haley Schnitzer
A: Parents always worry about the future of people with disabilities. Had personal experience, it was positive, but some don’t have that environment. Several parts struck a nerve
F: It was hard to read how people treat people with disability
A: Gives them the thought that they need to fix it. “They’re suffering” instead just put up more ramps
N: People don’t really look at it like that, they just say “poor thing” and “how can they get out of the wheelchair?” and “a tragedy” But that’s not what people with disabilities are doing.
A: People focus on what people lack instead of what they have going for them. It’s part of their identity, but they are also more than their disability
F: “personal imagination” versus “cultural imagination” it’s exactly that, imagination. We shouldn’t be “imagining” we should be asking.
A: disabled people know what’s best for disabled people. How do you know how they’re feeling if you don’t ask them?
N: Abled persons projecting how they would feel if they were disabled. Abled bodied people don’t have to worry about ramps etc. When you are abled, it’s a nightmare to see yourself as disbaled which leads us to say “we need to fix this”
F: the study with blind folding kids and putting them in wheelchairs doesn’t do it justice. They are just temporarily blind/disabled
A: disabled people go through their daily life with these disabilities. Claiming to know it all just because you know someone who is disabled also doesn’t do it justice. You can be an ally, but don’t go as far as saying you are disabled.
N: This appears to be a trend on social media.
A: Everyone has a different experience
N: I personally don’t associate with disability but I do have invisible disability. People would say “that’s so OCD of you” which is wrong.
L: they start using it as an adjective. Like “gay” as a negative adjective, and “autistic.”
A: In my school they used “autistic” for stupid.
F: my mother opened my eyes to autism with a student she had who was on the spectrum and ended up being the smartest kid in the class. Why is it used to call others “stupid” when they tend to be smarter than most?
A: When people base your personality on whether or not your disability is valid or not
N: Like “oh this autistic person does this, how come you don’t?” Everyone is different, that’s why there’s a spectrum
A: People would ask me to diagnose them for autism because I was, but I’m not a doctor. I know me, everyone is different. Just because you have these quirks, doesn’t mean you have it.
To Kill a Mockingbird
F: Killing a mockingbird is a sin because it gives you a song, killing a “cripple” is a sin because they have a lesson to teach us, that connected well for me
A: I don’t know about that, a con would be that disabled people will have a lesson to teach you, but people won’t learn the lesson until something bad happens to them
H: People look at disabled people as pitiful and people w/o disability tend to validate their life through the disabled
N: You can see this in fiction too, they never show the black disabled person to be the main character.
A: Subconscious or not, people think they don’t have much of a life to live
H: They’re the subplot to help the main realize something about life
A: At some point they become “cured” or overcome it (like “As Good As it Gets”) in which disabled people need to be cured in order to live.
Breakout Group 2 Section 2 3/2
Faith Hopkins, Alaina Taylor, Nathalie Luciano, Shane Mann, Lily Sportsman
A: I like how they use medusa’s sisters as a metaphor
N: “all disablied bodies have to do with the eyes, the hands, the speech”
A: I never thought about it until this article
N: Thought it was interesting how it mentions how disability creates a challenge with the representation of the body; everyone has a different view. Disability isn’t just this tiny picture, there’s so many. All of them comes together to create disability
A: no disability is the same. You can have the same symptoms but every disability is your own
N: The experiences are different, too, even if they have the same disability. Someone with a more visible disability has a completely different experience with someone with an invisible disability. Representation asks to be covered, but it’s so hard to do so with so many disabilities.
F: Soldiers have different outcomes with their “marks of pride” like with a scar, people would say that’s brave or attractive. If one loses legs or arms, it becomes sad.
A: What did you think of the analogy with cyborgs?
N: this analogy is nice, “disability is so unusual that they must be considered extraordinary”
A: Representation in pop culture: Cyborg from Teen Titans. Good representation for disability
F: Goes to show that there are some good/cool representations of disability
N: It’s less “oh he’s disabiled” and more “wow he’s so cool!”
A: looking more into it, he saves people’s lives and has an ordinary life.
N: What did you guys think of Cheryl Marie’s excerpt?
A: I like it because it says it doesn’t have to be a glamorous recovery
N: the good, the bad, and the ugly of asking for help.
MockingBird
F: I feel like this part that we had to read showed a lot of the “otherness” the sexism and
L: Shows the lenses of all the otherness. I like being able to see more than just the racism lens, the sexism and disability lens as well.
A: the lady with the addiction, it was hard to read once we found out that she had an addiction rather than just being a mean old lady
L: Sula showed this as well, having an addiction is like a disability like with Plum and the lady from Mockingbird. She wants to go out on her own terms but her “disability” stops her from living her life
A: Atticus holds her to some high regard and sends Jem to read to her. She gave him a lesson to teach; someone’s story isn’t always visible.
F: The way they humanize Tim Johnson by giving him a human name and being concerned about him; it’s like the opposite with the other novels we’ve read where they dehumanize people through animals.
L: Tim Johnson appears very distinguishable to me, like everyone should know who he is.
J. Faith Hopkins’s Response to Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands” and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Jillian Weise’s poem “Nondisabled Demands” informs the reader about how people who know about others’ disabilities will treat them. In contrast, in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader can see that the unknown will either scare or spark curiosity in others. Whether it is better to hide the truth or reveal disability to the public is argued over between these authors. While each has a different opinion, both of them have experience with the same issue: the infectious effects of gossip and the lie about disability.
In the beginning of the novel, “Boo” Radley is introduced in several stories. These stories are mostly negative and brand “Boo” as a dangerous character that should be locked up to avoid “no further trouble” (13). As Weise states in her poem, “You can’t expect people to read you / if you don’t come out and say it” which causes gossip to spread (line 6, 7). Lee and Weise show just how much people do not know about other people’s lives, even more so when he or she has a concealed disability. Compared to Weise’s poem, Lee’s novel represents disability in a negative light. The poem “Nondisabled Demands” still shows how disability is seen as a cumbersome weight, “an inspiration,” something to overcome, in other people’s eyes. The novel represents what happens when other people fear it when it is hidden from the public (line 18). Although in Weise’s poem, she states that if someone does have a disability, he or she should be transparent about it, but considering what has or has not happened to “Boo” Radley in the past,—not to mention his nickname—it would be harder for the Radley’s to follow Weise’s advice. “Boo” Radley is not seen as a charity case; instead he is seen as a monster. Even if the Radley’s were clear about their son’s condition it does not guarantee that the gossiping would stop.
Weise then continues on to say that if the person with a disability does not comply with the public, the people would “rope [he or she] to the podium” and continue to force a reply (line 13, 14). A parallel is seen between these two works of literature. Jem, Dill, and Scout end up attempting to lure “Boo” out to answer some questions about his past. Even though their intentions are innocent, their perceptions are damaging. Jem compares “Boo” to a turtle and proceeds to say that “turtles can’t feel” (18). This may be just Jem’s naivete, but Lee’s choices here appear meaningful. This could be Lee’s way of showing her audience how disability was viewed back in the thirties when there wasn’t much to know about it, especially through children’s eyes. Instead of keeping their distance, the kids are constantly drawn to the house partly because they are curious and partly because they are concerned. Dill questions “Boo” Radley’s state of mind: “How’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin’ but cats to eat?” (62). Again, the character’s idea of “Boo” Radley is distorted, but matches up with what Weise states in her poem about pitying the disabled. Either people will fear the unknown or pity it, but for children they do both.
Even though these are different situations in front of different audiences, the literary works coexist together to break the misconceptions about disability and how it should not be handled by the public. Instead of making up stories about the disabled and being noisy, the community should keep to themselves and realize that even people with disabilities can feel, too.
Word Count: 598
I pledge… J. Faith Hopkins
