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Book Review: My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church by Amy Kenny
A disabled Christian woman shares her experiences with ableism in the church and offers solutions and actionable steps for fostering disability justice and inclusion.
Summary:
Much of the church has forgotten that we worship a disabled God whose wounds survived resurrection, says Amy Kenny. It is time for the church to start treating disabled people as full members of the body of Christ who have much more to offer than a miraculous cure narrative and to learn from their embodied experiences. Written by a disabled Christian, this book shows that the church is missing out on the prophetic witness and blessing of disability. Kenny reflects on her experiences inside the church to expose unintentional ableism and cast a new vision for Christian communities to engage disability justice. She shows that until we cultivate church spaces where people with disabilities can fully belong, flourish, and lead, we are not valuing the diverse members of the body of Christ. Offering a unique blend of personal storytelling, fresh and compelling writing, biblical exegesis, and practical application, this book invites listeners to participate in disability justice and create a more inclusive community in church and parachurch spaces. Engaging content such as reflection questions and top-ten lists are included.
Review:
Intertwining memoir, Biblical commentary, and disability justice scholarship, the author explores disability within the US American Christian church.I picked this book up as research for the second book in my closed-door paranormal romance series, which uses werewolfism as a metaphor for disability (look for it this year!). You can grab the first book on Amazon, Bookshop.org, or other retailers, or request an advanced copy of the sequel.
The book is organized into ten chapters—seven of which start with the title “disability” and three with “disabled.” Each chapter begins with a memoir vignette and delves into the theme of the chapter. One chapter I particularly resonated with is “Disability Blessings.” It opens with the author singing a pop song during a medical procedure, before discussing the societal pressure to “fix” disabled bodies rather than support them. She then brings the conversation to the Bible, exploring the story of Jacob, who becomes disabled after wrestling with God. This disability, Kenny argues, is a sign of blessing, not something to be eradicated.
Faith, then looks like wrestling–all night long–and emerging with a healing limp….I treasure this image, because it allows me to envision my limp as part of my healing instead of something that must be cured or killed off in hopes of inspiring nondisabled people. (page 51)
She ends each chapter with bullet-point listed calls to action for disability justice. For example, in this chapter, the reader is invited to re-explore disability narratives in the Bible and view them through a lens of celebrating disabled people. After this, she features a “top ten” list of things people have actually said to her as a disabled person with each chapter on a theme. The theme of this chapter is “I know how you feel,” with the message being, of course, no one really knows how anyone else actually feels to live in their body.
The themes of the rest of the chapters are curatives, discrimination, doubters, justice, mosquitoes, lessons, disabled foundations, disabled God, and disabled church. The most controversial seems to be that of disabled God, but I found it rather inspiring. For example, the resurrected Christ, God incarnate, has the marks of the nails on his hands and a hole in his side. He invites Thomas to touch these places. Jesus was not resurrected with a “perfect” body, so why is there so much pressure on disabled Christians to “faith their way” to one?
Sometimes the author’s writing challenged me, but I viewed it as an invitation to sit with the discomfort. Why was what the author was saying making me uncomfortable? Was it really how she was saying it or was it just an entirely new perspective being brought to me? For example, I didn’t like that she didn’t disclose exactly what condition she has. But I sat with that and wondered why I felt the right to know?
As someone who is writing about disability through metaphor myself, this book encouraged me to consider my character viewing his werewolfism as a blessing, not a curse. Of course, there is nuance to this. For example, Kenny points out that of course she would prefer to not be in pain. But it’s possible to both dislike the negatives of a disability while also seeing the blessings that come with it. This is a perspective I’m striving to bring to my own book.
Overall, this is an interesting mix of memoir, Christian exegesis, and disability justice. Recommended to Christian readers looking to become better disability justice advocates and disability justice advocates looking to understand the Christian perspective.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 208 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Announcement: Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014
I am pleased to announce that I will again by hosting the Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge for 2014!
History and Goal of the Challenge:
I started the MIA Reading Challenge in December 2010 in an effort to raise awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of mental illness. Reading, both fiction and nonfiction, is an excellent way to broaden one’s horizons and expose one to new ideas and ways of thinking and being. Many reading challenges already exist in the book blogging community to address racism, sexism, and homophobia, but I could not find any to address the stigma faced by those suffering from mental illness. In spite of mental illnesses being recognized by the scientific community as diseases just like physical ones, many still think those suffering from one are at fault for their own suffering. I hope reading and reviewing books featuring characters struggling to deal with mental illness, whether their own or another person’s, will help remove the stigma faced on a daily basis by those with a mental illness. They already have to struggle with an illness; they shouldn’t have to face a stigma too.
What books count?
Any book, fiction or nonfiction, that is either about mental illness or features characters or real people with a mental illness counts for the challenge. However, the book must not demonize people with mental illnesses.
So, for example, the movie Fatal Attraction, which features a character with Borderline Personality Disorder, would not count since she is demonized in the movie. However, Girl Interrupted, which also features a character with Borderline Personality Disorder, would count since that character is presented as a three-dimensional person with good and bad traits.
If you’re having trouble coming up with books to read for the challenge, check out the list of recommended reads that I maintain on the challenge’s main page.
Challenge Levels:
Acquainted–4 books
Aware–8 books
Advocate–12 books
How do I participate?
Sign up by filling out the sign up form! I will post a list of all 2014’s participants on the challenge’s main page.
Feel free to grab the badge on this announcement to feature on your blogs. You can also join the GoodReads Group if you want.
Please make an announcement post on your blog about your participation to help spread the word.
Leave links to your reviews throughout 2014 by commenting with them on the challenge’s main page.
And that’s it!
Thanks, and I hope you’ll consider participating!
Friday Fun! (Freelance Editing, Reading Projects, and United States of Tara)
Hello my lovely readers! Gosh, things have been hopping here this January, haven’t they? I’m not sure why my reading has reached such a nice, steady rhythm, but I’m certainly enjoying it. :-)
A quick announcement. I’ve decided to start freelance editing. If you’re at all interested, please check out the dedicated page for more details. You all know that I’m a trustworthy, hard-working, smart gal, so I’d also appreciate it tons if you’d help spread the news. Thanks!
I was super-pleased at the extent of conversation and interaction that the first book for the Diet for a New America Reading Project saw. Thanks guys! Next month is The China Study
Tomorrow is the discussion of the penultimate book in The Real Help Reading Project–Blanche on the Lam
On Wednesday I was home sick, and you know how sometimes when you’re sick you just don’t have the focus to read. I therefore poked around my Netflix account and was pleased to see that the final season of United States of Tara was finally up on instant. The United States of Tara is a Showtime half-hour show about a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) trying to learn to cope with her disease without creativity-numbing medications so she can be free again to pursue her art. I was very pleased with the first two seasons that showed the reality of coping with a mental disease, but that did not demonize Tara or bestow sainthood upon her family members. I thus was really disappointed to see the third season take such a nosedive, and now I’m thinking I’m going to have to remove it from my recommended list.
The thing that made US of Tara so appealing in the first two seasons was that, yes, sometimes Tara did bad things as the result of her illness, but she was fairly good at finding a balance. She made mistakes like healthy people, just for different reasons. In season three, though, Tara develops a new alter who is pure evil. We’re talking stabby, Psycho sound effects, steals babies and tears her own teenage son’s room apart evil. This alter is an abuser alter–an alter who takes on the whole personality of Tara’s abuser. Now this is a real thing in DID (source) but the show handles it all wrong. Yes, the new alter is scary and would be to all of the known alters, Tara, and her family. However, having the alter kill all of Tara’s other alters then Tara kill the abuser alter is the exact opposite of how healthy healing from DID works. Healthy healing is either learning to cope with having alters or integration. Killing your alters and then proceeding to run off to therapy after the fact shrieks of writers who didn’t get their facts straight. For a show that started off so strongly and well-supported by the Mental Illness Alliance community, I was really disappointed in this.
The other bad message in season three that really bothers me as an advocate is the change in Tara’s family and how they handle things. Tara basically becomes too much for them to handle, and they all want to ship her off and lock her up. Ok, some people do need in-patient treatment, and I definitely would have re-entered Tara into real therapy much sooner than her family does to prevent all this drama in the first place, but essentially the family comes to say that Tara isn’t worth it. Tara is too much to handle. They’re just gonna go do their thing now. They even judge Max, Tara’s husband, for refusing to not continue to stick by her. He insists repeatedly that he’s neither a stupid person nor a saint. He just loves Tara. Yet, in the end, the whole family is torn apart, leaving just Max and Tara.
While it is, unfortunately, very true that a lot of people abandon loved ones with a mental illness, one of the positive aspects of this show was that it let people with a mental illness believe that in an enlightened family unit, it doesn’t have to be that way. Season three kills all that. The only one who truly loves and advocates for Tara is Max, and everyone else feels pity for him because of it. Sad stuff. Definitely not advocate stuff.
Announcement: Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2012!
I am pleased to announce that I will again by hosting the Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge for 2012! Just what is the MIA Reading Challenge? I’m glad you asked!
I started the MIA Reading Challenge in December 2010 in an effort to raise awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of mental illness. Reading, both fiction and nonfiction, is an excellent way to broaden one’s horizons and expose one to new ideas and ways of thinking and being. Many reading challenges already exist in the book blogging community to address racism, sexism, and homophobia, but I could not find any to address the stigma faced by those suffering from mental illness. In spite of mental illnesses being recognized by the scientific community as diseases just like physical ones, many still think those suffering from one are at fault for their own suffering. I hope reading and reviewing books featuring characters struggling to deal with mental illness, whether their own or another person’s, will help remove the stigma faced on a daily basis by those with a mental illness. They already have to struggle with an illness; they shouldn’t have to face a stigma too.
Challenge Levels:
Acquainted–4 books
Aware–8 books
Advocate–12 books
I think in the world of book blog reading challenges this is a fairly unique one for a good cause, and I hope you will consider signing up for it!
Just head on over to the challenge’s main page to sign up by commenting with a link to your announcement of participation and feel free to grab the 2012 button for your blog. The challenge page also contains a list of suggested books sorted by illness that 2011’s participants found to be very helpful.
Rock on, advocates!
Friday Fun! (MIA Reading Challenge Update)
Hello my lovely readers! Since we have just one week left of April, I thought I’d provide an MIA Reading Challenge update! I’m so pleased with the enthusiasm for the challenge shown by the participants, particularly since this is its first year existing.
By far our most prolific participant so far is Karen. Her reads have covered everything from OCD to Antisocial Personality Disorder. So far she has read and reviewed (links to her reviews): Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, An Unquiet Mind, Cut, The Bell Jar, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, Dexter in the Dark, Missing, House Rules, and I Don’t Want to Be Crazy. She’s only one book away from completing the highest level of the challenge. Go Karen!
Jules is keeping up a nice, steady pace so far, having read two books (links to her reviews): The Bell Jar (Depression) and Alias Grace (Dissociative Identity Disorder). Keep it up, Jules!
Jessica also has finished two books (links to her reviews): The Silver Linings Play Book (recovery from mental break-down) and The Madonnas of Leningrad (Alzheimer’s). Excellent pace for the level you signed up for, Jessica!
I’ve also completed two books that fit into the challenge description (links to my reviews): American Psycho (Antisocial Personality Disorder) and Hunger (Anorexia Nervosa).
Thank you everyone for your participation so far this year and for raising awareness on mental illnesses. We may be a small group so far, but hopefully each year will grow!
If you’ve read books for the challenge and I did not list you, please comment and let us all know! Unfortunately with the way my blog is, you commenting and telling me is the easiest way for me to keep up with what everyone has read.
It’s not too late to sign up for the challenge if you’re interested! Check out the MIA Reading Challenge page to find out more.
Happy weekends all!
Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge 2011
About the Challenge:
I decided to start hosting the Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge in 2011 in an effort to raise awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of mental illness. Reading, both fiction and nonfiction, is an excellent way to broaden one’s horizons and expose one to new ideas and ways of thinking and being. Many reading challenges already exist in the book blogging community to address racism, sexism, and homophobia, but I could not find any to address the stigma faced by those suffering from mental illness. In spite of mental illnesses being recognized by the scientific community as diseases just like physical ones, many still think those suffering from one are at fault for their own suffering. I hope reading and reviewing books featuring characters struggling to deal with mental illness, whether their own or another person’s, will help remove the stigma faced on a daily basis by those with a mental illness. They already have to struggle with an illness; they shouldn’t have to face a stigma too.
Challenge Levels:
Acquainted–4 books
Aware–8 books
Advocate–12 books
Rules:
- Books read for the challenge must address mental illness in some way. If it’s fiction, a character has a mental illness. It can also be non-fiction ranging from self-help books to academic books on the topic.
- No book read for the challenge may demonize the mentally ill. They certainly can be presented as 3-dimensional, flawed characters, but absolutely not demonized or presented as “crazy” etc… That goes against the purpose of this challenge.
- Books you read for this challenge can be counted for other challenges as well.
- Be sure to point out what mental illness or illnesses are addressed in the book in your review of the book. If you use LibraryThing or GoodReads in lieu of blogging, please just note it in the tags on the book or in the comment stating you’ve completed the book.
Reading Suggestions and Review Links:
Check out the official MIA Reading Challenge page to find reading suggestions. Also use the comments section on that page to post links to your reviews.
Sign Up:
Sign up by commenting in the comments section below with a link to your official sign-up post! If you don’t blog but use LibraryThing or GoodReads, you can still participate! Just note that in your comment.
Spread the Word:
Help get the word out on the challenge! Blog, tweet, facebook, email, whatever you can think of to do about it! Please feel free to grab the image above to post on your blog as well. This is a fun way to address an important cause. :-)
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 