Laura Hershey, a well-known activist, nonfiction writer and poet passed away November 26 following an illness. She leaves behind her partner, Robin Stephens ,and their daughter, Shannon, her mother, father and brother John Hershey.
"She was a genius who lived with disability and lived well,” Stephens told The Denver Post.
Hershey was an organizer for ADAPT and Not Dead Yet, a protestor against Jerry Lewis's muscular dystrophy telethons and an activist for gay and lesbian rights. She attended United Nations conferences on women's rights in Kenya and Beijing.
Hershey had a master’s degree in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and an honorary doctorate from Colorado College. She was 48, lived in Colorado and had spinal muscular atrophy.
Activist Jessica Lehman said, “Laura was at the cutting edge of disability rights, recognizing and exploring intersections of disability and sexuality, gender, race, class, gender identity and more. Through her powerful, loving and thought-provoking words, she changed the way many of us think and helped us explore and develop new ideas.”
The American Association of People with Disabilities released a statement saying, “Laura Hershey's life has enriched our world and her absence is deeply felt. Her partner, Robin, and daughter Shannon will remain in my heart during this difficult time.”
In her last blog post for the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, “The Good and Bad of Gratitude,” Hershey wrote about appreciation and the Thanksgiving holiday.
“I'm grateful for the disability community. It's diverse, dynamic, fractious, cantankerous, complacent, focused, distractible, powerful, pressed-down, and always enduring,” she wrote.
“I'm grateful for my body, though it often falls short. It's always had its ‘issues,’ to use a euphemism, and as I age these are multiplying. But it's who I am and how I interact with the world and other people and myself. My body hurts me and limits me more than I would like. It also receives and processes art and music and ocean breezes and delicious Vitamixed food. It sends out my voice, my voice of request and direction, my voice of protest, my voice of poetry and prose, my voice of desire,” she wrote.
“All too often, people with disabilities are pressured to feel gratitude for things that are their basic human rights – subsidized housing, support services, inclusion in the community, basic acceptance and respect.”
Hershey was the 2010 Lambda Fellow in Poetry. Her writing has been published in Fire in the Soul: 100 Poems for Human Rights, Trillium Literary Journal, New Mobility and Ms. Magazine.
In a recent poem called “Translating the Crip,” Hershey wrote:
“When I say crip I mean flesh-proof power, flash mob sticks and wheels in busy intersections, model mock.”
“When I say disability I mean all the brilliant ways we get through the planned fractures of the world.”
“When I say living in America today I mean thriving and unwelcome, the irony of the only possible time and place.”
There is a memorial website for Hershey at http://www.laurahershey.com/memorial/
This article was published in the January 2011 issue of Able News.
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