Diagnosing folklore: perspectives on disability, health and trauma Edited by Trevor J. Blank & Andrew Kitta; United States of America; University Press of Mississippi, 2015 pp. 251.

Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Disability, Health and Trauma is an interesting compilation of ideas around diagnosis and folklore across the spectrum of health. There are 10 chapters split across three sections; part one is entitled ‘Disability, Ethnography, and the Stigmatized Vernacular’; part two ’Folk Knowledge, Belief, and Treatment in Regional and Ethnic Health Praxis’; and part three ‘The Performance of Mental Illness, Stigma, and Trauma’. The chapters explore a range of subjects such as disability studies, the experience of inclusion within the special Olympics, holistic healers and invisibility within mental illness. The editors state that the book strives to provide a new perspective into the debates around the folkloristic study of disability, trauma, health, stigma and everything in between.

The first chapter is an exploration of the intersection between folklore and disability studies. The author, Amy Shuman, helpfully defines folklore as ‘the disciplinary imperatives to see others as they see themselves’ (24). This approach enables understanding to develop between different groups and perspectives. Shuman defines disability studies as an alternative approach to the medicalisation of the human body. Using the material of a British reality show on the topic of intellectual disabilities, the concept of normalcy is used to explore the relationship between disability studies and folklore. How does normativity relate to illness narratives and the idea of becoming an inspiration by overcoming one’s disability? Shuman astutely explains that combining disability studies together with the study of folklore increases its potential to improve knowledge and understanding.

The second chapter is written by Olivia Caldeira and is entitled ‘Exploring Esoteric and Exoteric definitions of Disability: Inclusion, Segregation and Kinship in a Special Olympics Group’. Based on fieldwork from the past five years in the Ohio Special Olympics group, the chapter focuses on the understandings, relationships and kinship between the members of the group. The issues surrounding inclusion and exclusion are of particular interest to both folklorists and disability studies scholars. Despite the efforts of the deinstitutionalisation movement which sought to promote inclusion, segregation still occurs due to a lack of understanding and funding, and it often starts for children in education. Michael Bérubé, a disability studies scholar, is quoted saying ‘what does segregation teach non disabled students?’ That ‘the “disabled” are always other people. You don’t have to worry about them. Somebody else is doing that’ (Bérubé, 1996, 205). Unhelpful messages such as these can start in education and get carried through into adulthood and into wider society with serious consequences. The esoteric (relating to one’s own group) and exoteric (relating to an outside group) model aids understanding of what it is like to be stigmatised from an insider and outsider perspective. Caldeira provides an interesting analysis of this model and the impact the group has had.

The eighth chapter entitled ‘The Functions of Vlogging on Bipolar Disorder’, written by Darcy Holtgrave, provides some interesting observations of YouTube videos made by people who have bipolar disorder. She notes that the vlogs are ‘evidence of the belief that sharing one’s personal story through narrative can have a positive impact on both the listener and the speaker’ (180). Through watching over 180 YouTube channels on bipolar disorder, Holtgrave notes that there are four main functions served by the videos: providing information, forming community, promoting self-efficacy and healing, and mitigating stigma. In their book about narrative practice, Lawrence and Mijangos (2017) promote sharing stories and explain that storytelling and listening help people to join together and create a collective voice which can help reduce isolation and social stigma. Despite vlogging not being a face-to-face, real-time experience, it seems that the act of speaking and listening through videos can still have the same powerful, emotionally connecting effect as a conversation. Research into mental health recovery found that telling stories of recovery can be cathartic and help give hope to others (Cowan and Guise 2011). Holtgrave articulates that publicly sharing personal stories can help reduce stigma as it enables the public to start making meaning of the experience too. This echoes some of the ideas of narrative practice which seeks to externalise internal stories to promote recovery and change (Lawrence and Mijangos 2017).

As a reader who is new to folkloristic study, I now feel introduced to the subject and I found interest and intrigue in each chapter. As the topic of folklore is broad it allows a wide range of topics to be explored. There was some connection between chapters; for instance, chapter eight on video narratives raised some similar ideas to chapter 10 which explored a narrative-based approach in Veterans’ storytelling. Although the introduction highlighted some of the topics included in the book, it would have enhanced the reading experience to have had a conclusion at the end of each section to tie together the different threads and connect the ideas. At times, in some chapters the writing was overly academic, which could make it harder to follow for a lay reader. This presents a challenge for disability studies scholars; to make their work accessible to the academic field and also to disabled people who may or may not be academics, as highlighted in the book Rethinking Disability (Wolbring 2016).

Rebecca Regler
Independent Scholar, Oxford, UK
[email protected]