July 14: Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)

[Image description: Woody Guthrie, guitar in hands; guitar displays a sign that reads "This Machine Kills Fascists"]

"The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine." --Woody Guthrie

Legendary American folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie was born on this date 96 years ago, in Okemah, Oklahoma. At age 52, he was picked up for vagrancy in New Jersey, and alcoholism or schizophrenia were suspected as underlying causes of his increasing erratic behavior and health changes. But at the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital he was instead diagnosed with Huntington's Chorea (now known as Huntington's Disease)--an incurable degenerative neurological condition. He died thirteen years later, at a state hospital in Queens, NY. Guthrie's ex-wife went on to work with other affected families on securing funding for research into HD.

This birthday gives me an opportunity to mention Alice Wexler's new book: The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington's and the Making of a Genetic Disease (Yale University Press, available September 2008) takes the story of Huntington's in America back long before Woody Guthrie, to the early 19th century, to the communities on Long Island where HD was a familiar reality in many leading local families. She follows the story of the disease through generations, through the eugenics era (where HD's strong genetic pattern made it an obvious subject of study), and into the present of genetic technology.

Flora Annie Steel, "Prince Half-a-Son" (1894)

Poking around some old children's storybooks online today (there are a lot of them from the 19th century, because they're in the public domain, and have wide appeal), I found Flora Annie Steel's Tales of the Punjab (1894), a collection of folktales Steel gathered during her two-decade stay in India as a British civil servant's wife. It's probably no surprise that a collection of folktales from any culture will include some disability themes; check out "Prince Half-a-Son," for example:

...the youngest Queen had only half-a-son—and that was what they called him at once,—just half-a-son, nothing more: he had one eye, one ear, one arm, one leg; in fact, looked at sideways, he was as handsome a young prince as you would wish to see, but frontways it was as plain as a pikestaff that he was only half-a-prince. Still he throve and grew strong, so that when his brothers went out shooting he begged to be allowed to go out also.

This prince uses his unusual body to become a hero against all expectations: for example, he can slip through fences that his brothers cannot (his magic power over rope also comes in handy). His brothers push him in a well, but he's small enough to hide well and overhear a serpent and pigeon discussing their own magic powers. In the end, he wins the hand of a beautiful princess in marriage, and his mocking, jealous brothers are all eaten by a demon.

So there.

[The illustration of Prince Half-a-son above, by J. Lockwood Kipling, is from the original 1894 edition of Steel's Tales of the Punjab, and is included in the online versions linked above. By way of description, it's a line drawing of a woman in traditional Indian clothing and jewelry, seated on the ground embracing a little boy in profile. Illustrator J. L. Kipling was the father of author Rudyard Kipling, whose works he also illustrated.]

February 11: Jane Yolen (b. 1939)

Prolific American writer Jane Yolen, born on this date 68 years ago, in New York City, is best known for her children's books based on folklore, and her young-adult books about the Holocaust (The Devil's Arithmetic and Briar Rose, both found on high-school reading lists across the US). But among her over 200 books are some illustrated titles that address disability themes. All of these are, sadly, out of print, but may be available in public libraries or secondhand through the usual channels. Look out for:

• The Boy who had Wings (1974) is considered deformed by his herding village, until he saves his father during a storm and becomes a hero (illustrated by Helga Aichinger)
  
• The Seeing Stick (1977), in which a blind Chinese princess learns to "grow eyes on the tips of her fingers" with the help of an old wizard (illustrated by Demtra Marsalis)
  
• The Sultan's Perfect Tree (1977) teaches that perfection is a dangerous goal for any living thing, because it means the end of growing and changing (illustrated by Barbara Garrison)
  
• The Mermaid's Three Wisdoms (1978), in which a deaf girl rejects sign language until she meets a mermaid, who explains to her that speech is useless underwater, and all the mer-people sign with fluid beauty (illustrated by Laura Rader)
  
• Greyling (1991) is about a seal-boy, a selchie, "a strange child with great grey eyes and silvery hair," whose unique makeup suits him for the rescue of his father at sea (there are editions variously illustrated by William Stobbs and by David Ray)
  
• Good Griselle (1994), about a lonely woman in medieval Paris, asked to raise "the ugliest child she had ever seen"--in fact, he's a small gargoyle in disguise, but together they find happiness (illustrated by David Christiana)
  

[Note: I compiled this list originally for a short journal article, "'Even Good Mothers Come to Grief Over Such': Jane Yolen's Good Griselle," Disability Studies Quarterly 24(1)(Winter 2004), but thought I'd share it here too, in observation of Yolen's birthday, and to make it more widely available.--PLR]