View source for Relevance of Non-Fiction Reading on Experience

*[http://itech.dickinson.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Stevens_Center Back to The Stevens Center]


----

Throughout the duration of this semester, we have been reading various works that center on disabilities.  These include, but are not limited to Jonathan Lethem's ''Motherless Brooklyn,'' "Fat," by Raymond Carter, excerpts from RoseMarie Garland-Thomson's  ''Extraordinary Bodies'', Katherine Dunn's ''Geek Love'', and various other short stories, articles and poems.  We have examined how these fictious works, as well as those of theory are applicable to our service learning.  Following are a gathering of reflections relating literay works and the Steven's Center.  

As of last week, all visitors at the center have to wear nametags, just to identify them to the members and facilitate interaction, I suppose.  What’s ironic about this is that not only do I now feel like I’m the “object of the gaze” as Garland-Thomson calls it, but I feel almost stigmatized for being “normal,” which is the complete opposite of what one would expect (26).  It’s bizarre the type of inverted stereotyping that is happening, unintentionally of course.  In the story “Fat” by Raymond Carver, the two main characters, the fat man and the narrator aren’t even allotted names.  Culture deems them as so anomalous that their physical trait (large and small) defines them completely.  At the Steven’s Center, on the other hand, my name is  paraded loud and clear, marking me as different, even though I represent the ‘normate’ in this situation.  I wonder, is this what it feels like to have a disability in such a narrowly defined world?

In visiting the center, one can draw many correlations between the intereactions with members and the texts and ideas from class. Talking to the members, one can realize how much they are stigmatized in doing every day things which most people take for granted.  Trips to the store or simple household chores can be difficult.  The gaze of the normative person upon these acts is generally laced with disdain for those who are not as capable as themselves. This shows that as much as the norms of society place stereotypes on the members and those with disabilities, those in the supposed "disabled" group also stereotype the norms which they encounter.  Those with disablities are shown to have many aspects to their lives other than the one thing for which they are so grouped.  This theme has been relevent throughout the semester in Lionel in ''Motherless Brooklyn''
or in the numerous members of the Binewski family.  Conversations with the members of the Stevens Center reveal that they are very similar to ourselves in many ways.