The hybrid short-story/poem “Autobiography/Anti/Autobiography” by Jennifer Bartlett is told from the perspective of a person with a disability. The author writes of the challenges she faces and also writes of the triumphs and successes of trying to do things, so many in this “o, stupid, stupid, world” take for granted. The author writes of
being very critical of self and chiding herself for sometimes falling (both literally and figuratively), yet still, she struggles to be, she wants to be. Ms. Bartlett speaks of her disability, where for her, “to walk means to trust forward” and of the lyrical beauty she sees in her spastic movement and in the grace of her body falling. A body, which though constrained by a disability, is seen and felt as being beautiful by the being held within. In spite of her inward and her outward grace and beauty, yet still, the author is compelled to acknowledge the tone-deafness of this “stupid, stupid world” that is critical and judgmental of her and of others with disabilities. “To be crippled,” writes the author, “is to have access to people’s fear of their own erosion.” This author writes of how the worst of people come to the fore when they are facing someone with disability; as though the able-bodied person has to erase or nullify the existence of the disabled person, possibly simply to hide an inferiority complex while displaying in all its tawdriness, the dangers of not having a sense of self and of others. Being institutionalized, sterilized, silenced, excluded, stared at, and desexualized are but some of the behaviors directed by “normal” people towards the disabled author. And finally, the author writes of the tiredness of trying to fit into a “normal.” world, and having to deal with the crippling disabilities of ignorant normal people who are wantonly wicked towards disabled people. It is not the disability that is too much to bear, rather it is the reactions of the “normal” world that is too much for the author to bear.

There was an intriguing one-sentence quote from “On Being Ill” by Virginia Woolf just before the start of the short story by Jennifer Bartlett. The sentence started “This monster, the body, this miracle, its pain,….” and this made me look up the story by the British author Woolf simply because I have not seen many articles written about illness, and I was curious about her take on “Being Ill.” The author writes about how little has been written about illness and feels that illness should be just as relevant as love in literature. In the very first sentence, Ms. Woolf writes, “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings…, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” The body, she states, is just as important as the mind. But she feels that illness is not written about much in literature because “there is a poverty of the language.” Continues Ms. Woolf, a schoolgirl who falls in love can refer to Shakespeare and Keats, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor, and language at once runs dry.

I believe that most of us believe that we are bright and have great manners, yet somehow we feel that we do
not know how to act in the presence of someone who is ill, or traumatized, sad, different, or disabled. If we are sincere in recognizing the humanity or humanness in people, any awkwardness we feel will be outweighed by our need to make others feel the best about themselves. We will never be taught everything we need to know, but we have to be willing to use our experiences and our sense of self to reach out to others, even if we believe it makes us uncomfortable. People are people, and most people love to tell stories about themselves. This class has shown me just how important it is to allow others to tell us who they are, tell us what is important to them. Even without knowing someone’s story, we have to be willing to see the being in each person. These two poems and our previous readings have shown us how difficult it is to change the dialogue about illness, disabilities, and healing the sick. The art of listening and observing must be developed before we can effect change.

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