Currently reading
Soulless: The Manga Vol. 2 (The Parasol Protectorate Manga #2)
Asymmetry (Twelve Planets)
Mullumbimby Madness #1: Never Trust a Book with a Colour Cover
The Walking Dead, Vol. 18: What Comes After
Sunburnt Country
Bark at the Moon: Bert Rokey's Letters from the South Pacific, 1942-1945: How a Soldier and Sabetha, His Kansas Farm Community, Survived World War II
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Girl Defective
Midnight Blue-Light Special
My Policeman
Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America
This book was an excellent academic treatise on the discourses of reproductive rights and disability rights that swirled around the 1960s rubella epidemic in the USA, with some examination of the 'thalidomide babies' narrative that occurred at the same time. It's not often I can find an author who can talk about the benefits of abortion-rights advocacy while at the same time critically examining the "disability as tragedy" narrative AND the dodgy racial politics of the time. I very much appreciated the careful balance in this book. Particularly interesting to me was the way in which abortion only became 'acceptable' (well, in cases of fetal disability if nothing else) only because suddenly the face of the abortion rights movement became married white women, with the spectre of supposedly tragic, hideous disability being the fate they were trying to avoid. And absolutely fascinating were the author's remarks on how the medical profession has the credit for the 'discovery' of congenital rubella syndrome, while it actually grew out of mothers' collective observations, research, and questioning. The expertise and passion of these mothers has been largely erased from the record, and this author goes some way toward rectifying that.The author goes on to talk about the activism of the parents of children with congenital rubella syndrome achieving milestones in universal education access, the children growing up to become political actors themselves in the disability rights area, and the extremely high vaccination uptake being followed by backlash by people who feared that it caused autism (more tragedy narrative).Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the history of USAn feminism and abortion rights, disability discourse, or medical history.
