Missives from the Margins

You wouldn’t know it just by looking at me. If we were to exchange passing glances on the sidewalk or bump carts under the fluorescent grocery store light, you would probably make the same assumption about me as most everybody else. And who can blame you? Who can blame any of us for making the same mistake when this is what we have been taught to do? Ableism is so deeply socially ingrained that even people with disabilities are not immune to it.

We assume disability looks, sounds, moves, and maybe even thinks a certain way. Normal isn’t just a setting on a washing machine; it distinguishes the charity givers from the charity cases; the problem children from the students who won’t be left behind; the filthy malingerers from the deserving poor– differentiating society’s producers from its burdens, it separates you from me. Normal is the difference among the seen and the unseen, and disability is what takes place in between.

“Normal is the difference among the seen and the unseen, and disability is what takes place in between.”

But yes, I am disabled. And no, you wouldn’t know it just by looking at me. If you were to perceive me with your eyes, you would see a shorter-than-average white woman with dark, fiercely expressive features, who walks upright on both legs and tends to carry too many things in her hands and on her shoulders. If you were to listen to me reveal myself in words, you might mistake my passion for aggression because that is what we have been conditioned to do when women speak their truth. But if you paid attention, you would hear my voice tremble in my mouth. You would see my hands shake in my lap.

This isn’t easy to write. I have so many things to tell you, so much to say, and I want to say it perfectly. I want to show you how much I deserve this platform. Not that I deserve it more than any other, but that I deserve it at all. And what is the lived experience of disability if it isn’t constantly facing notions of unworthiness? Unworthy because our worth is measured by our productivity. Unworthy without inspirational narratives of the resilient supercrip. Unworthy unless we are a certain weight, a certain class, and a certain kind of disabled. Unworthy unless we assimilate or until we overcome disability entirely.

I want you to care. At the very least, I think you should care for the simple fact that at any point in life anyone could become disabled. In fact, it is almost inevitable. Whether through aging, genetics, injury, or illness, you may lose any number of the faculties you have come to depend on. If that were to happen, what would you do without your health, mobility, or senses? What would happen to you if you woke up tomorrow without the ability to support yourself or your family? How would you feel to discover that it isn’t so much the disability itself that limits you but rather the lack of dignity, support, and access afforded to you by society?

My goal with Missives from the Margins is to challenge the belief that disability is a tragedy or personal failure, and to encourage readers to think critically about the impact of ableism in media and policy. Amplifying and celebrating cross-disability perspectives, Missives from the Margins will engage historical and contemporary voices in conversation through research, visual art, and storytelling. These stories will show you that no social issue is separate from the issue of disability and no part of our history is independent of disability history. Weaving together stories and research, I will show just how interconnected disability is with major issues like education, healthcare, housing, and labor. I will also demonstrate that stigmatized societal attitudes and harmful policy related to other minoritized identities are historically rooted in ableism. For a deeper-dive into the disability language, history, and culture related to each issue, I will publish a companion piece on my Substack, by R. Nann.

Missives from the Margins is a deeply personal project to me.  As Douglas Banyton observed, “disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but conspicuously absent in the histories we write.” Disability isn’t simply absent from these histories; it has been erased–  just as countless educators, elected officials, medical professionals, and citizens have attempted to do to people with disabilities throughout world history. In my lived experience and through my own scholarship, I have come to understand this erasure of disability from history as a function of our collective dehumanization. Erasing us from history makes it easier to erase us from society.

This knowledge has become the inspiration behind this project. As an artist and a lover of the arts, I understand the power of a good story. The stories I tell here will be partly autobiographical, infusing the details of my own life and art and work, but they will also largely be the stories of other NH residents with disabilities. Through the telling of our stories and the stories of the past, I will render the invisible, visible. I will show the readers who think this has nothing to do with them that they are not separate from us, and that nothing about us without us is for us.

In this first issue of Missives from the Margins, I am sharing an original poem and a mixed media self-portrait. Out of the Blue (2017) is the first piece in a series of self-portraits dealing with topics of disability, mental health, trauma, and chronic pain. The title of this piece is the namesake for the series, also titled Out of the Blue. My poem, I Shed Many Private Tears, was written during the height of the COVID pandemic, a time when the entire nation also entered a housing crisis. A common experience among people with disabilities is struggling with housing instability and poor health outcomes associated with poverty. According to research by Housing and Urban Development (HUD), roughly 40% of HUD-assisted households are occupied by people with disabilities. People with disabilities are also disproportionately affected by food insecurity. For many years, with my primary source of income being Social Security disability income, I have lived below the federal poverty line. In this poem I express the desperation and stress associated with being displaced from my home and being unable to afford the cost of living. Pouring myself into my art, be it visual or written, has played a vital role in my ability to tolerate life and its many injustices. The act of art-making provides a safe place for me to retreat to, where I can also imagine a life unfettered by ableism and poverty. 

I Shed Many Private Tears
By R. Nann

I shed many private tears.

Bid adieu to each day by
dragging my bag of aching
bones and other invisible things
into bed with me.

It’s been too much for too long
mining hope where demand
exceeds supply. 

Busy legs
shuffle by cardboard billboards
held by skinny fingers
stained with poverty.

How and when and why
did they just become
a part of every cityscape?

They, my kin
our family tree

a rambling weed.

They, white noise

backdrop humming behind
the sound of your comfort.

It aches, and it aches, and it aches

how thin the membrane is
between them
and me.

As creator of Missives from the Margins, Rebecca Nann aims to amplify and celebrate cross-disability perspectives while exploring the historical roots of the contemporary issues faced by people with disabilities. In addition to completing several research internships with the Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) and the Global, Racial, and Social Inequality Lab (GRSIL), Rebecca is a scholar, artist, essayist, and provocateur for social justice.

Identifying as a person with disabilities who has experience with poverty and trauma, Rebecca has provided valuable insight as a former member of the Boards of Directors for New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA), the Legal Advice and Referral Center (LARC), and 603 Legal Aid. She completed her associate degree in General Studies with High Honors from NHTI in 2023 and studied Sociology at Keene State College.

Follow Rebecca’s creative work on social media and by subscribing to her substack RNann.Substack.com