Over the past month I have been questioning my understanding of disability after reading G. Thomas Couser’s book  Signifying Bodies. Couser identifies how societies understanding of disability is limited and often are associated with stigmas (i.e. helplessness and unequal). He encourages people with disabilities to write autobiographies that ‘question the status quo’, to show abled body people that the real constraints of disability isn’t due to the disability itself but of the social stigmas that oppressive to those with disabilities. I then was directed towards Pasquale Toscano’s article The Myth of Disability ‘Sob Stories’ which talks about Toscanos own personal experience with disability and provides a real example of Couser’s argument of the power behind disability life narratives.

       Pasquale Toscano in 2013 was hit by a car while bicycling and was paralysed from the waist down, but after months of therapy Toscano is now able to walk with the assistance of a cane and an ankle brace. Pasquale Toscano in In The Myth of Disability ‘Sob Stories’  tells us of the paradigm shift he encounters from his understanding of disability prior to accident and what being disabled is actually like. In 2016 Toscano won the Rhodes academic scholarship, and was questioned by one of his professors whether he would  “throw away the cane and brace?” after winning the scholarship. Toscano identifies how his professors comment come directly from the stigma of disabled people as being unequal in terms of having “perks” like handicap parking, being wheeled to a gate when flying, or being able to win scholarships based on pity (Toscano,2017). That any of their accomplishments or failures are because of their disability and not because of the person themselves because you can’t differentiate someone who is disabled from their disability (that’s all they are). He identifies these stigmas and criticises how these “perks” are ‘not perks or convenient but essential’. He doesn’t have the choice to walk up stair or take the elevator he only has the one option.

      I think Toscano does a key thing here in pointing out that disability is not a choice, it is his life. He also questions the status quo, he identifies how their is only one understanding on disability in society and that the label of being disabled immediately outcasts an individual as being an abled member of society. He checks off all the ‘criteria’ Couser encourages disabled people to have in their autobiographies:  question the stigmas and status quo, and encourage the rhetoric of emancipation (Couser, 33). The thoughts that Toscano provides for us in his article allow for people, like me, to question their understanding of disability. Walking away from these texts my understanding of disability has been completely shifted and I can see how Couser’s guide for autobiographies for the disabled is an amazing gateway into getting people to understand that disability does not come from an individual’s impairment but from the social stigmas that come with being labeled as disabled.

Work Cited

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies:disability in contemporary life writing. University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Toscano, Pasquale  “The Myth of Disability ‘Sob Stories’ ” The New York Times. 14 Jun. 2017. Opinion. Web. 5 Nov. 2018.