Becoming Citizens: Family Life and the Politics of Disability

This secret history of the lives and treatment of the developmentally disabled, as told by parents and siblings, is one of those marvelous books whose parts add up to something much greater than their sum. The individual family narratives tell of struggles: against doctors who automatically advocate institutionalization, against schools that refuse to teach Down's Syndrome children to read for fear of damaging their psyches, against psychologists who suggest dressing their children in drab-colored clothing, so as not to attract undue attention. These oral histories bring to light the little-known story of a movement relegated to the sidelines of the civil rights struggle, fought by mothers from living rooms and church basements and won in the federal courts. Schwartzenberg, a photographer and visual artist, puts her own photographs side by side with family snapshots and other archival documents for a book that transforms the intimacy of its individual stories into something of profound universal resonance. (Feb.)