Being Heumann

From the first page of her memoir, Judith drives home the idea that people must learn to view disability from another angle and develop an understanding of how disability might be a difference but is not necessarily a setback or something to pity. To Judith, disability is not a misfortune, and it is not something that solely defines a person. She acknowledges that without her disability, she would never have had the life she had. While her disability does define her in this way, she is not her disability. Judith sees her disability as something that pushes her to try harder, learn more, and fight against the status quo. She believes she would not have been the same if she never contracted polio because “[i]f I’d simply been a girl growing up in Brooklyn, I wouldn’t have been exposed to the same things” (202), and she has never wished that she did not have a disability. In the conclusion of her memoir, Judith urges the reader to imagine a world in which stories about people with disabilities were inspiring and uplifting, featuring people who do not pity themselves and depicting people with disabilities as the human beings that they are. Even as a child, Judith knows she has a disability but does not feel sorry for herself or see it as something that sets her back; instead, society holds her back because of her disability, such as not allowing her to attend school or obtain a teaching license.

Around the world, disability continues to be seen through a stereotyped and discriminatory lens. This fact is prominent in media and everyday life, as Judith points out that “disability is seen as a burden, a tragedy” (201). People with disabilities are often seen as helpless, incapable, or unworthy, or they are simply not seen at all. Throughout her life, Judith experiences minor and major instances of discrimination, and her anger inspires her to fight back. When she is eight years old, a boy asks her if she is sick, and it suddenly strikes her that the world views her as distinctly different and feeble. One of the most significant cases of discrimination that Judith experiences is when she tries to obtain her teaching license and needs to undergo a medical examination. While this is a standard procedure, Judith is immediately certain that the doctor is discriminating against her based on her disability. The doctor asks Judith about her bathroom habits and long-term medical history and also demands that she comes back and prove she can walk, even after Judith states several times that she cannot walk at all. People also tell Judith that she would be a fire hazard in a school and state “concerns” that she would not be able to help herself in an emergency. This results in a lawsuit that Judith wins, which sets her on a path of speaking out against the status quo. Judith proves that she is the pure opposite of feeble and helpless.

Judith’s fights to improve the lives of people with disabilities are not limited to political movements; she also seeks to improve media representation and the general outlook that people have toward disabilities. When Judith travels to India and meets an activist group that is inspiring change in their village by encouraging people to call those with disabilities by name and support them, she realizes that even the smallest of changes can make a huge difference: “You drop a petal in the water and it has a ripple effect” (197). In the conclusion of her memoir, she addresses current events and looks to the future of disability movements. She finds it difficult to reflect on the actions that Trump took during his presidency to reduce support and rights for people with disabilities, noting how progress can be reversed at any time and must never be taken for granted. Judith hopes that people who read her story will be inspired to effect change in their own ways, and she asserts that “every single person [has] a role in producing the change” (210).