The Story of Beautiful Girl, by Rachel Simon

One of the great roles of fiction is the opportunity to see the world through someone else's eyes.  In the story of Beautiful Girl, Rachel Simon gives a voice to some who are literally voiceless and tells the stories of people whose stories are never told.

This novel, which spans several decades, opens with Lynnie, or Beautiful Girl, and her friend #42 arriving one rainy night at the home of Martha, an elderly widow whose reclusive life is mostly taken up by corresponding with her far-flung former students.  The rain-soaked couple have a newborn baby with them, wrapped in blankets. Number 42 is deaf and mute; Lynnie does not speak either, and seems to have an intellectual disability.  Martha realizes that Lynnie has just given birth to the baby, but is able to learn nothing more about them.  As quickly as they appeared they disappear, Lynnie taken away by officials from the institution from which they had briefly escaped, and #42 disappearing into the night.  But the baby had been hidden. Her existence was completely unknown to the school. So Martha raised her, keeping her identity a secret.

The rest of the story follows three strands: of Martha and the baby as they move about, evading those who would link her back to the school; Lynnie, as she returns to the school and her life after the school; and as #42, Homan, tries to get by in a world where he cannot hear or speak.  It's pretty melodramatic and contrived at times, but Simon draws the reader into the characters' worlds, making you care about them and the course of their lives.  Martha's heroic choices, Homan's steadfast determination, and Lynnie's unfailing hope will inspire you.

Simon tells the story against the background of the experiences of people with disabilities in the second half of the twentieth century.  The "school" where Lynnie lives much of her life, the State School for the Incurable and Feebleminded (the name sounds silly to us now, but is typical of institutions founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries), is fictional, but is based on schools Simon has researched and seen first-hand.  (Her sister has an intellectual disability.)  Lynnie witnesses and suffers from unspeakable abuses by school staff, an expose by local and national media, subsequent reforms, and the eventual closing of the school.  When the school closes, she deals with living in a group home, finding work and getting around in daily life, and becoming a self-advocate, attending conferences and testifying before lawmakers.

In Homan's story, Simon gives us a view to the life of an uneducated deaf man, who spent much of his life totally unable to communicate with most people.  He had learned a dialect of sign as a boy, but it was years before he began to learn ASL and speak with other deaf people.  Homan's character was inspired by the true story of a deaf boy who was arrested and dumped in an institution simply because officials didn't know what else to do with him.  His story is told in God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24, which I haven't read, but will add it to my list!

Simon doesn't preach or shake her fist at the treatment of people disabilities.  The Story of Beautiful Girl is, first of all, a story, but there is no question that Simon has a bit of an agenda here.  She educates about the history of disability services, she gives the reader insight into the world of people with disabilities, and she helps the reader understand the perspective of people with disabilities.

I was particularly interested in Simon's treatment of religion.  Lynnie has dim memories of her family's Jewish heritage; at one point we learn that her family was shunned from the synagogue because of Lynnie's disability.  After #42's impromptu funeral, Martha "could not help but wonder how there could be a God if people treated this man as they had, and Lynnie was forced to live in a place like the School--and this child could be doomed to a life of desolation."  One of my favorite characters was Kate, who worked at the school and became a friend and advocate for Lynnie.  She "found her work an act of penance," a way to live out Jesus' admonition to "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."  She also remembered Jesus words in Matthew, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."  In her own family, "she taught her children that every person. . . deserved kindness."

Lynnie had some reflections of her own at her friend Doreen's funeral.  When the minister "moved on to talk about her finding eternal happiness now that she was home with the Lord, Lynnie stopped listening.  Doreen had never said a word about God, and Lynnie was far from certain she believed in God herself.  People who did talk about God, like Kate, said they felt His presence deep in their heart.  In Lynnie's heart, she felt nothing.  If there was a God, why did Doreen have to die to go home?  If there was a God, why did Doreen's father give her money but never visit?  If there was a God, why could Lynnie barely see Buddy and Julia in her mind? . . .  If there was a God, [Doreen's] parents would have come--eventually.  But never had come first."

Besides telling a great story, Simon gives us a lot to think about in our own relationships with people with disabilities.  Whatever someone's ability or disability, everyone has hopes and dreams and longs for friendship.  Everyone has a story to tell.  When we encounter someone with a disability, let's wonder, with Kate, "How many others are out there?  How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking?"


 

A Disability History of the United States, by Kim E. Nielsen

In writing A Disability History of the United States, Kim Nielsen takes on a difficult but very interesting task.  She examines the history of our nation from the perspective of disability, specifically the experiences and treatment of people with disabilities in the United States.  Given the changing perspectives of and language surrounding disability, it would not have been easy to trace that thread through historical documents, but Nielsen gathers plenty of anecdotes and primary sources to bring together a "wide-ranging chronological American history narrative told through the lives of people with disabilities."

Like many historians in today's black studies, gender studies, gay studies or feminist studies field, Nielsen looks at history and events through a particular lens, in her case the lens of disability.  She demonstrates the extent to which ableism has prevailed, stigmatizing disability and equating disability with dependency.  To a certain extent, in the lives of Native Americans and in colonial America, disability was only an issue when it prevented useful work.  Nielsen may be guilty of idealizing some of the Native American groups, but the attitude she attributes to them, that everyone has a unique contribution to make, no matter what physical limitations they have, is certainly commendable.

The treatment of slaves and women receives special attention, as these groups were considered disabled simply because of their race and gender.  As they were by definition disabled, they required extra care--and of course extra measures of control.  With the establishment of a new nation, new forms of organization and bureaucracy emerged, one expression of which was institutions for the disabled.  In some cases, these were successful, such as schools for the deaf.  In others, however, disabled people "whose bodies or minds were believed to be beyond redemption were variably warehoused or removed."  This remained the case well into the twentieth century, when activists and reformers exposed horrific conditions at certain institutions, leading to a movement promoting deinstitutionalization and independent living.  This work continues to be necessary even today.

One of the many devastating outcomes of the Civil War was the huge number of soldiers disabled during the war.  Nielsen points out that every war leads to improvements in prosthetics, starting with the Civil War.  One Confederate veteran who had his leg amputated during the war, James Hanger, began a prosthetics company that survives even today.  (We have gotten orthotic foot braces for my daughter from Hanger.)  On the other hand, not only disabled veterans but others who were "diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" were prohibited from appearing in public or from begging on the street by "ugly laws" imposed in San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, and other cities.

The reader, disabled or not, can be heartened by the progress made by disabled people, starting in the latter half of the twentieth century.  Although the disabled rights movement doesn't get the attention that  racial equality and feminism get, groups of disabled people fully embraced the civil rights movement as their own.  We tend to take for granted the fruit of the disability rights movement like wheelchair ramps, TTY phones, and countless other means by which life has become more accessible for people with disabilities.

Just as blacks, women, and other minorities have experienced subjugation and worked toward equality, so have people with disabilities.  Nielsen writes, "There is no question that the power to define bodies as disabled has given justification, throughout US history, for subjugation and oppression."  Far too often "ableism defines disability and people with disabilities as defective and inadequate, and . . . disability is used to create and justify hierarchies."  By telling the stories of disabled people in history, she points out the stigma while pointing toward the pride emerging in spite of ableist ideology.

Thanks to Edelweis and the publisher for this complimentary review copy.