#spooniebookclub January 2021 Book Vote
(if you’re new to this and haven’t seen my other post, feel free to join!)
I’ve looked up lists of popular/well-liked books centered around disability, and here’s a few options for us to vote on. We will read the winner of this vote in January (doing our best to find it in libraries, etc. - I hope we don’t have too much trouble finding it. I recommend the library app Overdrive and other recommendations would be greatly appreciated) and discuss it around the end of the month.
If we find accessibility to the book is an issue, we will pick the top two books to discuss, giving people a better chance to find at least one.
(The remaining books on this list, if they have interest, will be rolled over into next month’s vote.)
Option 1: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (a nonfiction personal memoir)
[description copied from a Bookriot(.)com list]
Elyn R. Saks began hearing voices when she was a teenager, at a time when schizophrenia was largely misunderstood. Throughout her young adulthood, she struggled with crippling paranoia and the frequent inability to tell reality apart from delusions. Through years of treatment, however, she was able to overcome significant barriers related to her disorder and become a lawyer, professor, and psychiatrist. This memoir details Saks’s experiences as well as ongoing challenges she still faces related to the disorder.
Option 2: On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (fiction)
[description copied from toledolibrary(.)org]
On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis is unique in that it focuses on what happens when an autistic woman named Denise is faced with the apocalypse. I wanted to include this book since I read an article about disability and the apocalyptic narrative a few months ago, and thought the discussion was incredibly interesting.
Option 3: The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken (fiction)
[description copied from lithub(.)com]
This poignant and affecting novel about spinster librarian Peggy Cort’s love for James Sweatt, a younger man who was already 6’2” at eleven years old, can be seen as a counter to Diane Arbus’s famous 1970 photo, “The Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents.” Whereas Arbus’s giant is but a metaphor for our fear of difference—as well as the photographer’s own sense of herself as freakish—McCracken depicts the inner life of James Sweatt, as well as his life with his family, who welcomes Peggy into their fold. McCracken doesn’t shy away from the physical issues that beset James’s body as he grows older and taller. The humanity of this novel is breathtaking.
Option 4: Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan R. Nussbaum (fiction)
[description also copied from lithub]
Playwright Nussbaum’s fiction debut, recipient of the Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is told in the voices of seven diverse characters, patients or employees of an institution for adolescents with disabilities. 15-year-old Yessenia describes the situation succinctly: “I do not know why they send us all to the same place but that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it looks like it will always be because I am in tenth grade and I been in cripple this or cripple that my whole sweet, succulent Puerto Rican life.” Nussbaum gives voice to every character with an unsentimental vitality rarely matched in fiction.
Option 5: Laughing at my Nightmare by Shawn Burcaw (nonfiction memoir)
[desc copied from toledo library again]
Laughing at My Nightmareby Shane Burcaw is a very humorous account of Burcaw’s experience growing up with spinal muscular atrophy. His work is very relatable to teens as he was only 21 when he wrote his book, and makes difficult discussions accessible through humor.
Please post a reply voting for no more than two options with their numbers. (For example, you could say: I vote for Option 1 & Option 2 or Option 3 gets my vote!).
