The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation is the first comprehensive history of the disabled community’s ongoing struggle for civil rights. Co-authors Doris Zames Fleischer, a humanities professor, and her sister Frieda Zames, a longtime disability rights activist, survey issues such as job discrimination, education, health care and accessible transportation and housing, in clear, fast-moving prose.
The book’s greatest value may be its articulation of an insider’s perspective on disability. The authors clearly have an agenda, but are not overbearing; rather, the data they present – including many personal narratives by disabled activists – compels the reader to rethink her own value judgments about accommodation of the disabled. It is not just a social history, but a philosophical and cultural meditation on the meaning of disability and difference.
