The Ragged Edge: The Disability Experience from the Pages of the Disability Rag

Essay Anthology. What this book attempts to capture and convey is simply the experience of being a person with a disability in America today. From the introduction: It is hard to unravel the tangled, knotted ball of the disability experience - isolation and differentness versus a common identity; images of weakness, vulnerability, enforced childishness... This book attempts to weave a rough but strong cloth from these gnarled strands, to give the feel of the disability experience.

"Reading The Ragged Edge [anthology] is like sitting in on a vigorous, sometimes funny, and often irreverent roundtable discussion of the issues that most concern all humanity, disabled and nondisabled, whether they admit it or not. Some of the voices are reflective, some sad, some furious, but none will lull you to sleep. On the contrary, you'll feel ready to roll on out and transform the world."-- Nancy Mairs, author of Plaintext, Carnal Acts, Ordinary Time and Waist High In the World. "The Disability Rag is the voice of a mighty revolution, and this stunning collection from its first 15 years will become an invaluable primer for anyone who wants to understand the new thinking of the disability rights movement. Here are the urgent, spirited and provocative stories that have changed the way people -- disabled and nondisabled -- have come to view what it means to have a disability." -- Joseph. P. Shapiro, U.S. News & World Report, author of No Pity:: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement.