Claiming Disability

Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University, 1998.

Claiming Disability isn't a book about reading diverse literature, per se, but it has helped me think about implications of the language we use to talk about disability and how and when characters with disabilities are portrayed in texts.

One of my favorite quotes appears early in the text:

Disability studies takes for its subject matter not simply the variations that exist in human behavior, appearance, functioning, sensory acuity, and cognitive processing but, more crucially, the meaning we make of those variations. The field explores the critical divisions our society makes in creating the normal versus the pathological, the insider versus the outsider, or the competent citizen versus the ward of the state. (2)

I'm curious about people's responses to this quote: What does this have to do with reading diverse children's literature? Or whether and how we think of "disability" as a category of "diverse literature"? What types of questions would we ask about texts and our reading of texts if we read through a "disability studies" framework?