Hello, DTTS community!
I have been so touched by the steady stream of new followers and subscribers over the last few weeks. I say it every month, but please accept my deep gratitude for welcoming my words into your inbox. And of course, big love for each and every one of our podcast listeners—I’m so proud of the community we’ve built together, along with our incredible guests.
You all push me every day to bend and reimagine the world and how all of our bodies can exist within it. Because of you, I have hope in a just, peaceful, and rich future for disabled people everywhere.
As we wrap up 2023, I’ve been thinking a lot about history, and how it shapes our path into the future.
This Thanksgiving, my vast extended family gathered, as we do each year. This time, we took a deep dive into our collective history, thanks to one of my cousins who has always served as our family’s archivist. He painstakingly combed through old documents gathered from the homes of relatives in India over several decades, bringing together photographs, home videos, and interviews with elders to curate a beautiful presentation of our family narrative.
As with all family stories, ours is complex—a tapestry woven with the threads of many lives that have braided together over time. Sometimes these threads intersect, and at other times they diverge, but they hold together nonetheless.
My cousin started his retelling with our great grandfather, a civil surgeon in the British Raj and later the independent Indian government. He traced the threads of his ten children as they crossed borders during Partition and ventured across continents, somehow managing to hold fast to one another, even with oceans between them.
We all listened intently as my cousin described the common characteristics that we share as a family—a penchant for adventure, a desire to do our best in whatever we endeavor to do, and a deep commitment to family and community. I had heard many of these stories before, but seeing them presented as a whole narrative arc, complete with photos, videos, and audio recording, as well as my cousin’s artful storytelling, made me feel deeply grounded in a way I hadn’t felt before.
I now understand who my ancestors were as individuals, and as a family. Their bond remained fierce, even as a violent rending of their homeland into India and Pakistan brought brutality into their home. My grandfather and great grandfather were arrested by Indian authorities on suspicion of fomenting communal unrest as Muslims now living in a predominantly Hindu country.
I saw how they reinvented themselves, more than once, as the family diaspora continued on to the UK, US, and Canada. Their resilience filled me with hope. Their stories equipped me to face the uncertainty of the future as they had, with a spirit of adventure and the ability to solve whatever challenges might come my way.
Sharing this space with my family as we celebrated our collective narrative together over delicious food, laughter, and the antics of our youngest generation reminded me of my conversation with Andrew Leland about his phenomenal book, The Country of the Blind.
My family’s origin story is part of who I am and how I see my future. So, too, is my disability history, and the lives of the blind ancestors who came before me. Their legacy of determination in the face of oppression and discrimination made it possible for me to live the life I have now. I enjoy opportunities that would not have existed without their sacrifices—a realization that is at once humbling and galvanizing.
Just as I want to honor the resilience of my familial ancestors, I feel compelled to do the same for my disabled ancestors. Knowing and understanding our history is in itself a source of power. When we know where we came from, and how we got there, we can chart a course forward that is infused with the lessons of the past. A fire ignites when we use that past to shape new possibilities for the future.
This is why the work of organizations like the Disability History and Culture Collective is so critical. One of their principal aims is to establish a disability history museum in Washington DC where disabled people from all over the world can come to tell the stories of those who would not settle for silence and exclusion: the people who forged new paths, using their endless ingenuity and determination to demand the rights they deserve, and those who have contributed to culture, government, science, technology, and so much more. Their stories are so often left out of the mainstream narrative, but must be told.
Shared history is the foundation on which movements are built. The more people see themselves in the stones of that foundation, the stronger we become.
I hope that 2024 finds you exploring your own history and the possibilities it creates.
In solidarity,
Qudsiya