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Nancy Mairs's essay “Disability from Carnival Acts describes how the speaker, Nancy Mairs, lives every day with a disability. She reveals her view on the handicap and disabled. Nancy Mairs has multiple sclerosis, weakening of the bones, and she feels as if she is being judged and is inferior to everyone else. The audience is definitely aware of how she feels. She is very blunt about her feelings and everything else. She wants to make a stand for all the disabled people. The essay displays desperation, as well as hope. She is desperate to be equal and to no be judged; She has hope that one day all handicap will be equal. Nancy Mairs is a true symbol of how handicap people can persevere, stand through anything, and triumph over adversity. She lives a competent life filled with judgmental people looking at her poorly, simply because of her disability.…
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Mairs starts her essay by describing herself as a crippled woman with multiple sclerosis, speaks about her condition and states how she’s never noticed a cripple woman like her in the media.…
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Later, Mairs shifts by appealing to the readers logic. She proceeds to show the faulty logic of local advertisers; when she asked why he did not include disabled people in his advertisements, he responded “We don’t want to give people the idea that our product is just for the handicapped.” Mairs explains the holes in his faulty logic by pointing out that if you saw a disabled person on a commercial, you would not think that the product is purely for the…
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Nancy Mairs starts her essay by describing herself as a crippled woman with multiple sclerosis. She talks about her condition and how she’s never seen a crippled woman like her in the media. Then she mentions some television shows about disabled people that focus almost entirely on disabilities and neglect the person’s character. Mairs states that although disability changes a lot in one’s life, it doesn’t kill him/her. She for example, can do what every other woman her age can do. And although she’s a great consumer, advertisers never choose someone like her to represent their products publicly; and the reason for that, according to Mairs, is that people cannot yet accept the fact that disability is something ordinary. The consequences of this situation are hash on disable people, for they might feel like they don’t exist. Finally, Nancy Mairs says that anyone might become disabled. But if one sees disability as a normal characteristic then it…
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In my opinion, David Birnbaum’s essay is convincing due to the fact that it happened to him. The reliance of his personal experience makes the essay vivid with the examples given. His daily encounter with people shows his everyday struggle as a handicapped. David uses his own experience to prove that people with disability can almost get away with anything versus with people who are able. The personal experience makes it easy to understand and is believable.…
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Throughout the essay, “Becoming Disabled” by Rosemarie Garland-Thomas, her main claim that she argues is that she wants the disabled community to be politicized in the eyes of society. First, Garland-Thomas talks about politicizing disabilities into a movement. She compares and contrasts movements for race and sexual orientations to the movements about disability (2). Disability movements have not gained as much attention as race or sexual orientation movements because so many Americans do not realize how prominent disability separation is in America. She wants people to start recognizing that disability is just as important as race and other movements. Next, Garland-Thomas speaks about different types of disabilities and how they aren’t always…
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Inspirational narratives and Disabilities Studies In the academic field of Disability Studies, scholars note that the disability community objects to being referred to as “inspirational.” When journalism and the media focus on the “Supercrip,” those extraordinary individuals who achieve amazing things though disabled, they are reinforcing a narrative pattern that repeatedly portrays a disabled person who develops from having a severe disability to super-achiever through incredible perseverance, in the end living a dignified life that approximates “normalcy.” The "overcoming narrative" (the story of a disabled person who may not achieve extraordinary things but is able to overcome the disability and live according to the aspirations, desires, and social norms of the general society) is another narrative type that is criticized in Disability…
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She was able to change her academic struggles into an experience that taught her that perseverance and how hard work pays off in the end. She experienced homesickness and the horrendous feel of not fitting in with everyone else. Even dealing with the loss of a beloved family member. Julie faced many hardships along the way, which tested her self-confidence and abilities, but through her perseverance she found her identity, true self, and is able to show that to others with pride. These experiences helped create who she is as of now and help her realize how one moment in your life can change how you perceive…
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A specific part of the narrative in which I appreciate the author’s candor is when Sophie describes her mother’s insecurities but accepts her imperfections. Sophie sees light in everything and fails to let things drag her down. She isn’t resilient to conform, but rather insists on creating a positive life for herself. She does anything to make her mother happy. Deep in her heart Sophie knows she doesn’t want to be a doctor but her mother’s insistence takes precedence of her own thoughts. (56) Instead of pondering why her mother works such inhospitable jobs, she feels pity and wants to help her mother out. She understands and refrains from asking her mother questions about the mysterious Marc Chevalier, a long-time boyfriend.…
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This essay is very different because she points out a word that defines her and then describes how it doesn’t define her. When Mairs was a graduate student she got diagnosed with MS, a disease that slowly shuts down your basic body functions and ability to move. She doesn’t like the fact that she has this disease but she accepts it. She knows that dwelling on it and being sad all the time won’t fix anything. This is very brave in my opinion, when you have had something for your whole life and then it is all of a sudden taken away from you I think that most people would be very sad about this. She handled her sadness and frustration way better than most people in her situation would have.…
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Though I get the main purpose of this essay, I don’t really think it has created an effect on me. Part of it is because I cannot relate to the character, another is that I know the narrator too well that I know what is going to happen. Everyone knows what is going to happen. Her personality is so set in stone that the room for interpretation is limited. We all know she is super anxious, worrisome, and over-protective from the way she talks to the audience, the way she thought of another woman over the screen, the way she rolls the stroller on the street. In addition, everything is so crystal clear and evident that there is no much need to go back and flip through the story once again to understand the underlining purpose. The ambiguity element is missing in this essay, thus makes this work less appealing and less effective on…
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When reading autobiographies written by people with disabilities, a source of tension can sometimes stem from the author and the mediatory forces which surround their writing process. When reading autobiographies about individuals with intellectual disabilities, however, this tension colors every inch of the text, from its organizational structure to the progression of its narrative. This can call the reliability of the content into question. In the case of memoirs such as Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with my Sister and Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz’s Count Us In, the various forms of narrative mediation present essentially warp the texts into providing narratives exclusively targeted at a non-disabled audience. To elaborate, their stories…
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The writer tone is depressing, negative and an almost malicious undertone. The writer starts the essay off making the reader feel like she is upset with her father is living due to being forced to care for her aging parents. She continues thought the essay to write in a somber view of caring for her aging parents. A good example is when she sates that she is like a Kafka character who kills himself even though he has much to live for. Another statement the writer used to build tone in the essay was one that could be deemed as morbid: I almost don’t know what I envy Bernard Cooper for more—his incomparable literary genius or the fact that his father is dead. Wishing one’s parent was dead goes against all social norms, this leads to the tone of the essay being grim, dark and depressing. The use of negativity and resentment ensure the readers would be aware of the writers tone. The writer continues to develop this tone by inserting statements that seems against social norms, for example: With a sudden angry snort, my father woke up. I won’t say I wish I had hit him over the head with a frying pan to finish the job when it seemed we were so, so close. This showed in a passive aggressive way that she seems to want her father to die. Another example of the writer using a negative tone is when she is discussing Thomas, her Dad’s care giver who stated that he could help her dad live longer and she wrote ”Oh my God—how could he say…
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The narrator draws the audience in to attempt to elicit from them that she was not ill. She explains that she tries to tell her husband what she needs is to get out and do things, “Personally, I do not agree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them….I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus”(Steton, 648) and she really is okay “John is a physician, and perhaps (would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind-) perhaps that is one reason why I do not get better faster,”(Stetson, 647). As the story progresses the narrator has the reader feel her…
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Nancy Mairs had a normal, healthy life like any other person. Although, as time went by, she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which eats away the protective covering of nerves which interrupts the nerves’ signals that passes through the central nervous system. Mairs piece had a purpose to inform her audience about her personal life and her thoughts about being “crippled”. Mairs also includes the superficial beauty standards society has set. Mairs relates it to her and her audience’s feelings about the way it shaped people’s criticism of others that do not set to the superficial standards in society. Mairs captivates her audience to read more and be thoughtful about what she wrote is because of her uses of a variety of rhetorical…
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