Reviews for Welcome to English Student Text 5

The average rating for Welcome to English Student Text 5 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-22 00:00:00 Jewelrit Stewart Everyone: read this book. It takes an ice-pick to the trope of 'pitiful cripple' that many of us carry about. Mairs is a brilliant essayist and memoirist, writing about her own experiences as a woman with MS, who has lost movement in two legs and one arm and lives in the Southwest. She weaves larger themes on disability studies into her narrative, making this book a lot more accessible to general readers than academic disability-studies books. My favorite moments include: -Her claim to ethics -- Mairs is a Catholic Worker and insists on the requirement that she continue doing 'good works,' even as she's treated as a service project herself. -Her frank discussion on disability and sexuality (in which she jokes she nearly titled the book "Cock-High in the World"). -Nuanced discussion of euthanasia and abortion of fetuses with disabilities. -Re-casting of 'western writing' to include the perspectives of disabled western authors. -All the wit and humor and richness of Mairs' writing. Seriously: read this!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-31 00:00:00 Phillip Beck I have read this book 3 times, the first two about 10 years ago, either right before or right after I graduated from college. The first time I read it, it was a library copy, and I couldn't mark it up the way I was dying to, so I dog-earred pages and used slips of paper as bookmarks to share passages with others. Then, I bought my own copy and was liberal with the yellow highlighter. This time around, I used an ink pen, to differentiate between my different readings. And, somewhat surprisingly, I managed to underline different passages than I did before, even though those yellow words still resonated. It would make sense to recommend this book to anyone who uses a wheelchair, because, even though our experiences are vastly different, Mairs and I have a lot in common, as evidenced by her essays here. However, I would recommend this book to nondisabled readers, even those who have never had an encounter with someone with a disability. It might seem like a depressing read to someone who doesn't understand the differentiation between the words "cripple," "handicapped," or "disabled." But, though Mairs doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of living with a disability in a world that actively seems to say "We don't want you here," her writing is also sharp and funny - sometimes even "LOL" worthy. It will have nondisabled readers thinking differently about the world they traverse on two legs, and readers with disabilities will revel in the fact of knowing that someone, somewhere, understands. Visit my blog at Bums & Bellybuttons.