Being Seen: A Deaf Blind Women's Fight to End Ableism / Elsa Sjunneson / 2021
I'm deeply grateful Melissa recommended this book to me. I am skeptical of memoirs that narrate the trauma of [insert historically marginalized group] and argue for representation in an overly sentimental fashion. Maybe I felt burned by the asexual book I read. This book was radically different, extremely insightful, and managed to make the expected arguments for representation with much greater stakes than usual. Elsa dives between memoir, historical essays, media studies analyses with a choppy step perhaps. Chapters proceed somewhat haphazardly and the organization seems a little smorgasbord rather than building in the cleanest way. However, this barely weakens the tremendous insights of Being Seen. Elsa's blunt and at times bitter narration is also extremely determined and painfully kind. I'm incredibly grateful Sjunneson is helping those of us newer to accessibility catch up and I'll be seeking more disabled literature in this mode, hoping to keep breaking down my inherited ableism and find new worlds of imagination in literature and art, as well as care work strategies and ethos. 4.5/5