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| A gorgeous cover byPhoebe Kirk |
When I was little, I couldn’t pronounce my full name (Ruxandra is pretty tough for a toddler to swallow), so I called myself “Ada”. And since then, even though I use a nickname by which most of you know me, Ada stuck and that’s the name my family uses. So you can imagine that at first glance I felt a certain kinship to Adah from The Poisonwood Bible even though she spells her name the Biblical way.
Adah, in many ways, isn’t anything like me. She has hemiplegic cerebral palsy, and she’s often quite emotionless. But the deeper I got into the book, the more she fascinated me and the closer I felt to Adah; at one point, she says she’d rather be “Ada” with no “h”, to satisfy her palindrome penchant. The fact that Adah spent her entire youth physically limited by cerebral palsy fuels her lifelong craving for symmetry and balance, which she quenches through palindromes and a career in epidemiology.
In fact, Adah’s experience can be applied to many disabled children. I’m not going to go as far as to say that Kingsolver was trying to send a message that disabilities should be viewed in a certain aspect (because I don’t know her purpose exactly) but Adah’s story may provide some healthy advice by showing how Adah was able to maintain a sense of self-worth while dealing with the stigma of being seen as handicapped, unintelligent, and inferior.
An article from the Canadian Medical Association discusses two mindsets meant to eliminate the stigma altogether. One of the mindsets may actually be a little harmful in the long run (you might be able to guess which one and why).
- This mindset emphasizes person-first language, meaning that disabilities are disregarded on the premise that disabilities don’t define a person. When you take away the disability, the person is still human.
- This mindset acknowledges the disabilities, but recognizes that disabilities are a collective human experience. All people, even if they haven’t been diagnosed with a physical or mental disorder, struggle at some point in their lives. It would be unfair to judge people based on what they can’t do, so we should appreciate people by what they can do.
The article makes the claim that person-first language ends up suggesting that a) disabilities are inherently negative, shed a dark light on people, and must be overlooked; and b) a true “person” is able-bodied (i.e. a person with disabilities isn’t a true person). Of course, it’s important to remember that the purpose of this person-first definition is well-meaning; it seeks to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t looked down upon, because at the end of the day they’re as human as all of us.
I think Adah would definitely prefer the second option, because that’s how she constructed her life. Adah was able to accept herself and recognize her self worth, both when she had cerebral palsy and when she was healed. In a way, she actually felt that she lost a part of herself she had grown to like. She didn’t appreciate that people felt more open to her once she was healed, because she was no longer disabled, saying: “any man who admires my body now is a traitor to the previous Adah” (532).
Adah understood that her cerebral palsy was a reality, something she couldn’t deny, and she wouldn’t be the same person otherwise. Her condition didn’t make her weak, but rather stronger, as she was fiercely resolute and intelligent. I hope all children (and adults) with disabilities can take a page from Adah and embrace her empowering ethos. But more than that, I think the most constructive result of making a character like Adah is to expose people without disabilities to a brilliant teenager who happens to have cerebral palsy, but who isn’t held back by her physical limitations. That way, Adah engenders a sense of empathy that hopefully, little by little, will help break the stigma that disabilities are curse of inferiority.
Thank you, Barbara Kingsolver, and thank you, Adah.
