 First edition | |
| Author | Haben Girma |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Published | August 6, 2019 (Hachette Book Group) [1] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 978-1-5387-2872-7 |
Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law is a memoir by Haben Girma, disability rights advocate and first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. [2] [3]
Haben covers the time from Girma's childhood in Oakland, California, to her early professional life as a disability rights lawyer. Her deafblindness is progressive and so she had some sight and hearing as a child.
She attended mainstream public schools and camps for blind youth, spending summers with her mother's family in Eritrea. She had to deal with a lack of understanding from her teachers. Her parents were worried about her ability to take care of herself while on a school trip to Mali and later when attending Lewis & Clark College far from home.
She struggled in finding employment during and after her time in college, and hoped that a law degree would help.
At Harvard Law School, she needed accommodations in the classroom. At the time, her ASL skills were limited but she was no longer able to rely on her residual hearing. She was the one who came up with the idea of carrying a wireless keyboard that would allow another person to type information that would be transmitted to her computer, equipped with a refreshable braille display.
After graduation, she went to work as a disability rights lawyer and won a case that expanded the coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Haben received positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews , Publishers Weekly , and BookPage. [4] [3] [5] It was selected as a "New & Noteworthy" book by the New York Times . [6]
O referred to Girma as "a millennial Helen Keller" in recommending her book to readers. [7] Some media attention focused on Girma's wish to not be called "inspiring" in spite of her challenges and accomplishments, because she feels that it can be a cover for people's pity for her and their own gratitude that they do not share her disabilities. [8] [9]
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.
Deafblindness is the condition of little or no useful hearing and little or no useful sight. Different degrees of vision loss and auditory loss occur within each individual. Because of this inherent diversity, each deafblind individual's needs regarding lifestyle, communication, education, and work need to be addressed based on their degree of dual-modality deprivation, to improve their ability to live independently. In 1994, an estimated 35,000–40,000 United States residents were medically deafblind. Helen Keller was a well-known example of a deafblind individual. To further her lifelong mission to help the deafblind community to expand its horizons and gain opportunities, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, with a residential training program in Sands Point, New York, was established in 1967 by an act of Congress.
Julia Brace was a deafblind woman who enrolled at the American School for the Deaf, in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1825 and remained there as an employee after her graduation.
Alice Mary Betteridge Chapman was an Australian woman known as the first deafblind child to be educated in the country.
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Sarah Stup is an American writer and advocate. She writes about community inclusion, education, and her experience in the world as an autistic woman. Her work includes the children's book Do-Si-Do with Autism, a set of gift books, the poetry and essay collection Are Your Eyes Listening? Collected Works, and the novel Paul and His Beast.
Sophia Kindrick Alcorn was an educator who invented the Tadoma method of communication with people who are deaf and blind. She advocated for the rights of people with disabilities and upon retiring from her long career in teaching, she worked with the American Foundation for the Blind.
Marie Heurtin was a French deafblind woman. Despite learning no language until the age of ten, Marie was taught to sign, read, and write by the nuns of Notre Dame de Larnay, a convent near Poitiers. As a young adult, Marie helped educate other deafblind girls at the convent, including her younger sister, who was also deafblind.
Na Laga'at is a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 by Adina Tal and Eran Gur around the first of its kind in the world ensemble whose actors are all deafblind. The organization established a unique cultural center at the Levantbondet House in the Port of Jaffa in Tel Aviv. The center is a platform for creative arts, which promote equal and open dialogue and lead to social change built on the belief in the human spirit and its ability to reach out and make a change.
Haben Girma is an American disability rights advocate, and the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School.
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Mary R. Ziegler is an American legal historian. She holds the title Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
Elsa Sjunneson is an American speculative fiction writer, editor, media critic, and disability rights activist. She is a Hugo Award and Aurora Award winner through her editorial work on Uncanny Magazine. Deafblind since birth, Sjunneson writes and speaks extensively about the representation of disabilities in popular culture.