This is going to be my first dedicated book review post, in which I take a little more time to reflect on the impact of this book and what I did or did not like about it.
Shane Burcaw has become something of a celebrity online, and I first encountered him on tumblr. He has Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and he started blogging in order to vent about his life. He's very open about all aspects of his disability, and his blog is so funny because he writes up these stories about things you'd think someone with a disability would never want to share with people. Like how he goes to the bathroom, and stories about when it went all wrong and he got covered in his own pee. He makes it really funny instead of really gross. So, when I heard that he was writing a memoir, I was excited to read it.
His book has a lot of repeats of the stories from his blog, but he also included new stories about his childhood that were really great. Stories about school, making friends, and having crushes. He writes unashamedly about his fears about never being able to have a girlfriend or to have sex, and about how miserable he was when his condition deteriorated to the point that he was no longer able to masturbate. His frankness about these topics makes the reader somehow unembarrassed to be reading about them. Plus, you're laughing so hard that you're no longer thinking about how incredibly personal these stories are.
But then I got to the point when he started talking about how much he hated being in Special Education classes in school. Shane's depiction of others with disabilities, especially those with mental disabilities, were degrading and cruel. There didn't seem to be any point to his rude descriptions of the neurodivergent people he interacted with other than to put them down and describe them in a dehumanizing manner in order to distance himself from them and assure the reader that he's NOT LIKE THEM. Which was unnecessary and cruel. He talks so much about how he's just a regular guy who happens to have a disability, and at this point in the book I started realizing... His goal isn't to get people to empathize with all people with disabilities, but just to get them to see him as normal as compared to all other people with disabilities.
At first I was so disgusted with how he treated those other individuals with disabilities in his book, but then I started thinking more about it and I don't know that I have the right to criticize him. It's easy for me to say that he shouldn't be this rude about other people with disabilities, but as an able-bodied individual I am a part of the majority that has always segregated neurodivergent and disabled people. I haven't been forced to live in a bubble with a small section of the population. But I can relate. As a preteen I went through a period of intense hatred for other women, especially those who presented feminine. I hated girls who embraced typical girly things, who were good at flirting with boys, and who showed any dislike for reading or learning. I called them sluts and ditzes and was incredibly rude. But then I realized that what I was feeling, and what I thought of those girls, was a result of internalized misogyny. I had taken in all of the misogyny and sexism from society and believed it. And because I was a part of that group that was the target, I did everything I could to convince people that I wasn't really like other women. Once I realized what I was doing when I learned about misogyny, I rapidly got over my hatred for other women. I hope that Shane will come to realize that he has a lot of internalized ableism, and that in dealing with it he will learn to be less ashamed of his own disability and those of others.
Until that changes, I don't think that I can recommend this book to others. I did manage to get all the way through it, but Shane never lets up on the derogatory descriptions of people with disabilities he encounters and it's not something that is pleasant to read. It enforces stereotypes about people with disabilities that are harmful, and as he is lauded, those stereotypes will continue to flourish.
My rating: ★★☆☆☆
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