Nancy Mairs’ “On Being A Cripple” (Ch 1, p.65)
1. How does Nancy Mairs organize her essay? What connects the different parts to each other?
2. Why is Mairs so concerned with terminology? Discuss the importance of naming or identifying with a specific term.
3. In the 1990s many people or groups willingly accepted terms that in earlier decades might have incensed them. Mairs calls herself a “cripple”; Henry Louis Gates Jr. titles his book Colored People; Eighner invents “Dumpster diving”. Back in the 1920s Zora Neale Hurston playfully dealt with “Colored Me”. Gay people and literary critics speak of “queer theory.” What do these acts of appropriation suggest? What is gained in taking a term once used in derision and proudly accepting or claiming it?
(MLA formatted)