Reflection on the Disability History of the United States

Reading A Disability History of the United States is a very interesting experience for me. I am surprised, frightened, and not so surprised at the same time. In the beginning of the book, I was very intrigued in the living philosophy of the indigenous people as they view disability (of course there is no such word as “disability” at that time) as a more natural and ordinary thing than people arrived at this continent later on. It seems to me that the arrival of the Europeans disrupted the harmony and balance of the social structure of the indigenous people. The only differences between these two groups of people are the definitions on ability and normality. More  people living with disability in the European sense were “accepted” in the society of indigenous people because disability was not that uncommon, and other abilities of those disabled people were still needed. But who gets to define ability and normality in a society? What factors might leads to certain ways of definition?  

In the mean time, since I am not from this country, a lot of things in this book sounds exotic and strange to me as well. When reading other country’s history, you always started to think how your own country has been doing on the same issues. Sadly I don’t know much about the disability history of my own country, but this book reminded me about all the disabled people I learned about in the Chinese history and literature.