Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing

Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Signifying bodies Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Signifying bodies ! Disability in Contemporary Life Writing G. Thomas Couser the university of michigan press Ann Arbor Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2009 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2012 2011 2010 2009 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying bodies : disability in contemporary life writing / G. Thomas Couser. p. cm. — (Corporealities: discourses of disability) Includes index. ISBN 978-0-472-07069-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-05069-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. People with disabilities—United States—Biography—History and criticism. 2. People with disabilities, Writings of, American. 3. People with disabilities in literature. 4. Autobiography. I. Title. PS153.P48C68 2009 810.9'92087—dc22 2009018643 ISBN13 978-0-472-02659-3 (electronic) Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania ! In memory of Lucy Grealy (1963–2002) and Harriet McBryde Johnson (1957–2008) Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Acknowledgments This book represents the culmination of work that began with Recov- ering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing (Wisconsin, 1997) and continued with Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing (Cornell, 2004). In this long project my interest in life writing brought me into the ‹eld of disability studies. Over the course of my involvement in disability studies, I have incurred debts beyond those I can do justice to here. But I want to thank Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, who ‹rst welcomed me into the ‹eld—before I knew it existed, much less that I was in it. I am also indebted to editors of journals and special issues in which earlier versions of some chapters appeared: Rita Charon, editor of Lit- erature and Medicine, for soliciting chapter 2 (under a different title), “Paradigms Cost: Disability and Cultural Representation”; Charles M. Anderson for permission to reprint it; James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson for editing the volume, Embodied Rhetorics, in which chapter 3, “Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir,” ‹rst appeared (under a different title); Southern Illinois University Press for permission to reprint it; Craig Howes, editor of Biography (and running companion in Melbourne, Beijing, and Honolulu), for permission to reprint chapter 5, “Identity, Identicality, and Life Writ- ing: Telling (the Silent) Twins Apart”; Monica Casper for editing the special issue of Journal of Contemporary Ethnography in which chapter 6, “Autoethnography and Developmental Disability: Riding the Bus with My Sister,”appeared;Scott A.Hunt,editor ofJCE for permission to reprint it here; Brenda Brueggemann and Marian Lupo for editing the special issue of Prose Studies in which chapter 7, “Disability as Metaphor: What’s Wrong with Lying,”appeared;Ronald Corthell,ed- Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Acknowledgments itor of Prose Studies, for permission to reprint it; Andrew Sparkes, editor of Auto/Biography, for permission to reprint (under a new title) chapter 8, “Lucy Grealy and the Some Body Obituary,” and for intro- ducing me to real ale in Exeter, UK; Brenda Brueggemann, again, for not taking no for an answer when she invited me to write and deliver the paper that became chapter 9,“Life Writing and Disability Law: Un- doing Hardship”; James Phelan, editor of Narrative, for permission to reprint it. In addition, I thank Robert Polito of the New School for the invitation that led to the talk that provided the kernel of “The Some Body Memoir.” The manuscript bene‹tted from generous, thoughtful, and helpful comments by Susannah Mintz and an anonymous reader. I am also indebted to Sharon Snyder and David T. Mitchell for initiating the Michigan series in which this volume takes its place—as well as for their seminal work in the ‹eld. And I am grateful to LeAnn Fields, se- nior editor at the University of Michigan Press, for her generous re- ception of my manuscript; to Scott Ham and Marcia LaBrenz, for ex- peditious handling of it; and to Janice Brill for eagle-eyed copyediting. Julia Watson, longtime friend, colleague, and e-penpal, ‹rst put the idea for this book into my head. Without her thoughtful nudge, it might well not exist. As my teaching career draws toward its end, I am increasingly grateful for the intellectual stimulation and companionship of colleagues in my two areas of specialization, life writing studies and disability studies. They are too many to name, but in life writing, let me single out John Eakin, whose work has been a model of clarity and cogency and who has enlivened many conference venues. In disability studies, I owe a particular debt to Michael Bérubé for an opportunity to present some of the contents of this book at Pennsylvania State University and for his generous response to my earlier work. On the home front, my daily life, corporeal and otherwise, contin- ues to be enriched by the presence of my wife and peerless kayaking companion, Barbara Zabel. viii Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Contents The Some Body Memoir 1 Disability and Cultural Representation 16 31 Performing Conjoined Twinship 49 Telling (the Silent) Twins Apart 66 Riding the Bus with My Sister 89 What’s Wrong with Lying 110 130 Undoing Hardship 146 The New Disability Memoir 164 Works Cited 191 Index 199 Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367. Accessed 1 Nov 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Pennsylvania ! The Some Body Memoir n April 2002, in a lively review-essay entitled “Almost Famous: The Rise of the ‘Nobody’ Memoir” in the Washington Monthly, Lorraine Adams distinguished, usefully but also invidiously, between the “somebody memoir” and the “nobody memoir,”according to whether the author is known before its publication or becomes known only through its publication. Thus, Hillary Clinton’s Living History is a somebody memoir while Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face is a nobody memoir. This difference entails another, of course: somebody memoirs have preexisting audiences created by the eminence of their authors, whereas nobody memoirs have to create their readership from scratch by means of marketing, reviews, and word of mouth. One could say, then, that although nobody memoirs may be new, they earn their readership the old-fashioned way—on their merits. Based on a sample of more than 200 recent memoirs, Adams drew up a taxonomy of the nobody memoir; according to her, the most popular types are “in order of popularity” “the childhood memoir— incestuous, abusive, alcoholic, impoverished, minority, ‘normal,’ and the occasional privileged ...[;] the memoir ofphysical catastrophe— violence, quadriplegia, amputation, disease, death[;] . and [the memoir of] mental catastrophe—madness, addiction, alcoholism, anorexia, brain damage” (para. 8). Note the emphasis on dysfunction in the ‹rst type of memoir, with normal and privileged childhoods trailing traumatic ones, and the fact that the other two types are char- acterized as narrating distinct kinds of catastrophe. If you’re not somebody, it seems, your claim to public attention as a memoirist is Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability In Contemporary Life Writing. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915367.

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