With apologies for cross-postings:
Under the rubric of shameless promotion, I'm asking for support for
my book, Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability
Shame to Disability Pride, published late last summer. Excerpts of book
reviews are below. Before getting to them, I have two requests to make of
all my friends and supporters:
First, if it feels appropriate use the book in your classes and
encourage others to do the same. At least one educator is using MOVIE STARS in all
classes he teaches.
Second, the book is available on Amazon. While it is available on
other websites, including www.disabilitiesbooks.com, when Amazon gets lots of
people ordering the book on the same day it has a chance to make it into Amazon's
Hot 100. These are the greatest selling books of a twenty-four hour period
and can call attention to disability to lots of people unfamiliar with our
movement.
I'd like to ask as many people as possible who are interested in the book,
for themselves or others, to order it on Monday, July 26, the fourteenth
anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Let's promote
both at the same time, and maybe get the book into the Hot 100 where more people
will notice it.
You might be asking why someone outside of the disability rights world would
want the book.
Review excerpts, which list some of these reasons, follow:
"MOVIE STARS AND SENSUOUS SCARS is a powerful book…. The writing is clear and
flows well. The ideas are beautifully radical. He gives true insight into
disability and people with disabilities. His is a voice demanding to be heard."
-the late David Pfeiffer, renowned disability scholar and advocate
"Steve Brown takes us on a profound journey…. His advocacy doesn't preach but
teaches. With words describing his life and the lives of those close to him,
he opens a wide door through which any who can read or care to grow can pass."
-Mark Medoff, Author of the play CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD
"Chronicles author Steven Brown's journey from disability shame to disability
pride - and then some.
Includes a too-brief biography of his friends, Ed Roberts and Ed's mom, Zona
(what a woman!); the story of how Kalamazoo, Michigan got America's first curb
cuts in 1945; a tale of first CIL to wrest control from a bad board; the best
work we've seen on the reality of pain in his chapter "Hooked on Symptoms";
"The Truth about Telethons" and altogether more surprising and beautiful work
than we can describe here. Just get it."
--Mouth Magazine
http://www.webintegrity.net/cgi-bin/checkitout/checkitout.cgi?attitudeSTORE:CK
IE:HOMENEXT7:14:7++BI002c_82:ck:
"Nothing radicalizes like experience, and UH [University of Hawai`i]
historian Brown's journey into the disability-rights movement is captured in this fine
series of collected essays."
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 11, 2004
http://starbulletin.com/2004/04/11/features/story4.html
"MOVIE STARS AND SENSUOUS SCARS, with its attention-getting title, is a
loosely collected anthology of Brown's articles and research on disability culture.
Sharing his own cultural journey, he begins with his childhood. We read about
his adolescence in diary form. He tells of his continuing experience living
with Gaucher's disease. He looks at the difference between cure and healing.
Shared personal stories are an initial way to form culture: "Let's take our
fables, our stories and make them into the kinds of myths that future
generations will convey with pride when they discuss their ancestors -- early heroes of
the disability rights movement," he writes in "The Scientist and the Frog."
"We have a responsibility to show what we have accomplished -- and to share
what remains to be done." In "American Apartheid," Brown links the cultural
struggles of people with disabilities and African Americans. Other articles speak
also of struggle: a walkout to protest internal disputes about independent
living; telethon tyranny; the mutual struggle for rights within other minority
groups."
--Julie Shaw Cole, Posted Jan. 19, 2004
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/reviews/sensuousscarsreview.html
"a great book!...and i ain't just saying that because there a chapter about
me in it [that just added icing of honor!]. we all have scars...it's life. how
well we wear them makes us stars!"
--frank moore
"It's like you're getting two books in one: personally moving stories about
himself and others in the disability rights movement, combined with analysis
from his analytical/historical point of view as a professor."
Ed Heaton
DISABLED DEALER
Mid-Atlantic Region (March 2004-Op-Ed Column)
"I was on my way to Tulsa...Your book arrived about 2 days before my trip. I
ordered it to give me some additional ideas about pressing the media to use
more persons with disabilities. Particularly , when roles call for a character
who has a disability. What a surprise.
I have been trying to locate reading material to recommend about disability
as a cultural concept. I was always left with the impression that the authors
were writing to meet the expectations of the reader, rather than telling the
"story".
Your book hits the mark. I think the most difficult thing to do when writing
about such a complex and varied topic is to do it in a concise and clear
manner. To expose weaknesses as part of the process of being successful.
I wanted to write... but I just couldn't figure out where to being, how to
travel and what the last chapter would say. I still don't know, but you did
it."
--Robert S. Ardinger, PhD
President of Ardinger Consultants & Associates - National Training and
Civil Rights Consulting Firm
Adjunct Political Science Professor
Former Program Compliance Director HUD/FHEO - Author of HUD's 504 Regulations
"History buffs or disabled people interested in learning more about their
community history will be interested in this book. Students of disability
studies will also benefit from the mixed stories of individual and political,
autobiographical and biographical, local and national narratives…it adds
significantly to what we know about Ed and Zona Roberts and their role in disability
history. It shares personal and intimate tales of dealing with disability and the
organizations that serve people with disabilities."
Tanis Doe, Review of Disability Studies, www.rds.hawaii.edu
"Disability culture is at the heart and soul of the disability movement, and
in Steve Brown's writings we see that culture shining in all its glory."
-Mary Johnson, Editor, Ragged Edge
Steven E. Brown, Ph.D.
Center on Disability Studies
Review of Disability Studies
www.rds.hawaii.edu
Institute on Disability Culture
http://hometown.aol.com/sbrown8912/index.html
My book: Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars
information at: http://hometown.aol.com/sbrown8912/page7.html
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