A provocation to reclaim our disability lineage in order to profoundly reimagine the possibilities for our relationship to disability, kinship, and carework
Disability is often described as a tragedy, a crisis, or an aberration, though 1 in 5 people worldwide have a disability. Why is this common human experience rendered exceptional? In All Our Families, disability studies scholar Jennifer Natalya Fink argues that this originates in our families. When we cut a disabled member out of the family story, disability remains a trauma as opposed to a shared and ordinary experience. This makes disability and its diagnosis traumatic and exceptional.
Weaving together stories of members of her own family with sociohistorical research, Fink illustrates how the eradication of disabled people from family narratives is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems inherited from Nazis. By examining the rhetoric of genetic testing, she shows that a fear of disability begins before a child is even born and that a fear of disability is, fundamentally, a fear of care. Fink analyzes our racist and sexist care systems, exposing their inequities as a source of stigmatizing ableism.
Inspired by queer and critical race theory, Fink calls for a lineage of disability: a reclamation of disability as a history, a culture, and an identity. Such a lineage offers a means of seeing disability in the context of a collective sense of belonging, as cause for celebration, and is a call for a radical reimagining of carework and kinship. All Our Families challenges us to re-lineate disability within the family as a means of repair toward a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.
“Fink melds an accessible extended family narrative with a complex and wide-ranging survey of how ableism—intersecting with notions of race, class, gender, the family, the state, and purity—functions to otherize, dehumanize, and hide or erase disabled people. All Our Families offers a deep, reflective, and urgent call to enact a care ethic and also to reframe our identities, lineages, and relationships around notions of disabled kinship.”
—Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys
“In All Our Families, Fink uses her formidable intellect to examine a topic close to her justice-oriented heart: disability. Prioritizing the work of disabled activists, she shows how everyone suffers when we erase disabled people from our families and our society. With exacting humanity, Fink demonstrates how our family lines can reflect and perpetuate ableist systems and offers ways to create a truer and more just lineage. An important and powerful read.”
—Jessica Slice, essayist, memoirist, and author of This Is How We Play
“Jennifer Natalya Fink synthesizes decades of Disability scholarship while weaving in her multifaceted family story to present a powerful and moving message: Disability is part of every family history, and if we start reclaiming this lineage, we have the opportunity to transform our families and communities. Accessible, incisive, and compelling, All Our Families is an important and timely contribution.”
—Riva Lehrer, artist and author of Golem Girl: A Memoir
“Jennifer Natalya Fink’s All Our Families is a magisterial crip-queer reimagining of our disabled pasts and futures. It is the most thorough and engaging consideration of disability lineage and disability kinship available. Grounded in cutting-edge crip thought on disability justice and care work, All Our Families provides a definitive mapping of transformative modes of disability relationality and solidarity.”
—Robert McRuer, author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability
INTRODUCTION
Looking for Lineage
CHAPTER 1
Disability as Trauma, Family Lineage as Repair
CHAPTER 2
Nazis, Sorting, and Segregation: Delineating the Freakish
CHAPTER 3
Genes and Genocide: The Junk Science of Ableism
CHAPTER 4
Disappearing in Public: Modeling Magnificence
CHAPTER 5
Lineages of Care: Gender, Race, Class, and the Hidden Story of the Caregiver
CHAPTER 6
Reimagining Care: Lineating Mutual Aid
CHAPTER 7
Sewing the Ancestral Cloth: Weaving Us Together
APPENDIX I
Claim Your Disability Lineage
APPENDIX II:
Recipes for a Revolution: Reimagining Care and Community
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
- “Success Got Me Through My Mom’s Long Illness. That Shattered When She Died,” Teen Vogue, book referenced in op-ed
- “Jennifer Natalya Fink: On the Future of Disability Lineage, ” CIIS Public Programs Podcast, interview
- “Jennifer Natalya Fink on Disability Lineage — What It Is and How it Impacts Families, ” Tilt Parenting Podcast, interview
- “Disability Is a Thread in the Fabric of Life: A Reading Guide for Disability Pride, ” Beacon Broadside, blog
- “All Our Families (with Jennifer Natalya Fink), ” Down to the Struts, podcast
- “Jennifer Natalya Fink All Our Families, ” New Books Network, interview
- “How Do We Repair the Ableism in Our Family Tree, and Grow An Inclusive Future? ” MUTHA Magazine, Q&A
- “All Bodyminds in Every Space: A Conversation with Jennifer Natalya Fink, ” Los Angeles Review of Books, Q&A
- “All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship, ” The Pulse (Accessible Media Inc.), interview
- “Author’s life a winding path of queerness, art, pride and disability lineage, ” Washington Blade, feature
- “Interview with Jennifer Natalya Fink, author of the book, All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship,” Disability Beat (WEFT), live interview
- “Disability Studies Director and English Professor Releases New Book On Embracing Disability Lineages,” The Hoya, piece on book
- “How America’s Concepts of Disability and Family Were Created by Fascism,” Literary Hub, excerpt
- “We Should Claim Our Disabled Ancestors With Pride,” New York Times, guest essay
- “March 2022 Reads for the Rest of Us,” Ms. Magazine, listed in Reads for the Rest of Us roundup