Virtual Event: Jennifer Natalya Fink

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes JENNIFER NATALYA FINK— director of the Program in Disability Studies and a professor of English at Georgetown University—for a discussion of her latest book All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship. She will be joined in conversation by CORINNE MANNING, author of We Had No Rules.

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About All Our Families

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.

Praise for All Our Families

“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, 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, author of Golem Girl: A Memoir