I was squiring a visitor from Switzerland around Berkeley, Calif., each of us on one of my bicycles. On a recent afternoon ride in the Berkeley hills I found myself talking with a man somewhat younger than me. “Typically, disability is viewed as a tragedy,” as my friend the poet Jennifer Bartlett has observed. I am rolling disability, Berkeley professor, poet and essayist, father — in no particular order. And I write as a child of the black middle class, the child and grandchild of black doctors and teachers.

Source: New York Times May 23, 2019 15:02 UTC