Cute Little Baby Dwarf
Dwarfism through the years
Mature Sophisticated Adult Dwarf
This is my
"Saturn"
Polaroid. Those who have ever bought a Saturn car will know what I'm
talking about.
[My dwarfism weight and
fitness
page]
[ International
Dwarfism
Organization]
A new megasite, intended as a
worldwide source of information on dwarfism and on organizations involved
with dwarfism. Includes a Web-based interactive bulletin-board system. A project of Nick
Koonce and Brian Kline.
[SED, SMD
and Kniest Web
Site]
[ Little
People of America Genetics Position Statement. Also relevant to other
genetic disabilities.]
[ Genetics OMIM page -
useful for looking up specific types of dwarfism]
Specific Omim references
[
Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia, congenital type]
[
Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia, Tarda]
[
Spondylometaepiphyseal Dysplasia, Strudwick Type ]
[
This
book contains a biography of
me][
It is also available from Amazon.com]
Here are some books related to dwarfism that can be purchased from
Amazon.com.
[Armistead Maupin's Maybe the Moon] This book has a wonderful
protagonist that is a little person. This is one of the most human and
accurate portrayals of dwarfism that I have ever seen.
[Simon Mawer's Mendel's Dwarf]. This book is about a
geneticist
who is a dwarf (hmm, why does that sound familar?). I have mixed feelings
about this book because the protagonist is far more bitter than myself or
the other little people I know. But I think the book does a good job of
exploring the issues little people do deal with as well as issues related
to genetic diagnoses.
[Katherine Dunn's Geek Love]. The narrator of this
book is a dwarf whose parents deliberately give birth to "freaks". It is
an interesting example of disability pride although I'm not sure the
author meant it to be.
[Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River] This book also
has a protagonist that is a little person. Although this protagonist has
some of the same bitterness as the protagonist in _Mendel's Dwarf_, I
found this to be a much more realistic portrayal of person with dwarfism
because of how she learns to live and thrive with her dwarfism rather than
despite it.
[Chet Raymo's The Dork of Cork] In this book, dwarfism
is used as a metaphor for ugliness and there is no questioning of the idea
that little people are inherently ugly. While I am well aware that there
exists many people who will consider me ugly because of my dwarfism, I
reject the idea that I am in fact ugly, something the protagonist of this
book never does. And I am hardly unusual among other little people in my
view of myself. Also, the idea of dwarfism as disability is completely
ignored as exemplified in a scene where the protagonist blithely rides on
the back of a motorcycle with no problems holding on to the person in
front (hint: his arms wouldn't have been long enough to wrap around the
person's waist). The movie, _Frankie Starlight_, based on this book, was
better in that there wasn't the constant emphasis on the inherent ugliness
of dwarfism although the cynical part of me thinks that was because the
moviemakers thought the visual depiction of dwarfism made that
unnecessary. But, while I'm ranting, it did drive me crazy that the child
actor and adult actor playing the protagonist had different types of
dwarfism although I will grant that this probably wasn't obvious to most
people.
Copyright
The contents of this Web site are copyright © 2000 by Judith A.
Badner. The site is defined by the URLs http://jbadner.picturepage.net
and http://psy-pc120.bsd.uchicago.edu/~jbadner and all of its
subdirectories. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint,
reproduce, or otherwise make use of anything on this Web site, contact
Judith A. Badner.