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Books Sandwiched In: VIrtual Author Talks at Noon

Nadina LaSpina - Such a Pretty Girl

2021-05-13 12:00:00 2021-05-13 13:00:00 America/New_York Books Sandwiched In: VIrtual Author Talks at Noon Disability activist Nadina LaSpina joins us to discuss her book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride. Zoom -

Thursday, May 13
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Add to Calendar 2021-05-13 12:00:00 2021-05-13 13:00:00 America/New_York Books Sandwiched In: VIrtual Author Talks at Noon Disability activist Nadina LaSpina joins us to discuss her book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride. Zoom -

Disability activist Nadina LaSpina joins us to discuss her book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride.

Join us on Zoom using this link: vhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/89531628304

This event will also stream live on our Facebook page!

For more information, contact Jeffrey Panettiere at jpanettiere@nhfpl.org or by calling 203-946-2228.

Nadina LaSpina is an Italian-American disability rights activist, teacher, and author. Active in the disability rights movement for 40 years, you can find her in the streets with Disabled In Action, ADAPT, The Disability Caucus, and other groups. After teaching Italian for many years, LaSpina created and taught courses in Disability Studies at The New School. Her first book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride, is a memoir about her life and activism. She lives in New York City.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This is Nadina LaSpina's story - from her early years in her native Sicily, where she contracts polio as a baby, a fact that makes her the object of well-meaning pity and the target of messages of hopelessness, to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals where she is tortured in the quest for a cure and made to feel that her body no longer belongs to her, and to her rebellion and her activism in the disability-rights movement. 

LaSpina's personal growth parallels the movement's political development - from coming together, organizing, and fighting against exclusion from public and social life to the forging of a common identity, the blossoming of disability arts and culture, and the embracing of disability pride. 

While unique, LaSpina's journey is also one with which many disabled people can identify. It is the journey to find one's place in an ableist world - a world not made for disabled people, where disability is only seen in negative terms. LaSpina refutes all stereotypical narratives of disability. Through the telling of her life's story, without editorializing, she shows the harm that the overwhelming focus on pity and on a cure that remains elusive has done to disabled people. Her story exposes the disability prejudice ingrained in our sociopolitical system and denounces the oppressive standards of normalcy in a society that devalues those who are different and denies them basic rights.

Venue details


No registration necessary. Join us on Zoom using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89531628304

This event will also stream live on our Facebook page.

For more information contact Rory Martorana at rmartorana@nhfpl.org (phone 203-946-2283) or Jeffrey Panettiere at jpanettiere@nhfpl.org (phone 203-946-2228, ext. 606).