Okay, more link love for blogroll

My friend Amanda asked in comments yesterday if I could point out any cancer blogs because my sidebar blogroll is a bit intimidating in length. When I started this blog about four-and-a-half years ago and started building that big blogroll, I tended to not choose blogs that were mostly about posting on what drugs the blogger was taking and how much energy they had that day. I was looking for expressions -- even homey ones -- of disability as a social/political condition.

Specifically, I remember passing by a number of blogs by people with MS where the posts were almost exclusively about medications being taken, dosage, side-effects, effectiveness, etc. I wanted to hear whether or not their apartment was accessible or if coworkers were cutting them some slack when they were weary, if they were passing as nondisabled or revealed their condition at work and to family. If the diagnosis was accepted and believed.

But writing about many of those details presumes that the writer connects their illness or condition to the state of the environment around them and not just to the imperfect state of their body. And that doesn't always happen, or doesn't happen for a long time, for a number of good reasons. Often it's not the most pressing, consuming issue. It can take some time out there on the ground, in the streets, to notice what the social/political dimensions of disability are, especially if you are passing fairly easily. And many people (maybe most) resist joining up as one of "the disabled" because of what it means to their self-perception. There are quadriplegics out there who are okay with talking about social discrimination and the limitations of their physical bodies, yet they deny being "disabled," either semantically or categorically. I don't understand that latter, but I've also never been interested in arguing the point with those folk, so they tend not to make the blogroll either.

So, for those reasons and also my own blogroll-building shortsightedness, my blogroll is pretty lacking in some areas. Cancer blogs is one of those areas, though there is some scant representation:

Two of my favorite bloggers (and favorite online people), Sara of Moving Right Along and Jana of Pilgrim Steps each have amputated limbs because of cancer. You can see how my bias works right there -- they're part of my blogroll and daily reading because I relate to how they write about mobility issues and the social aspects of that. It just happens -- to me, though it's quite central in the story to each of them, I am sure -- that cancer was their path to disability awareness.

Now I think on it, I'd be pressed to name the diagnoses of most people on the blogroll, if it isn't clear in their blog's name. I'm more aware of particular impairment details of who uses a wheelchair or prosthesis, is autistic or blind, is bipolar or otherwise focused on mental health issues. I'm not uncaring, though clueless might be an apt accusation. The philosophy behind my sidebar means it's not particularly useful to anyone looking for a blog about a specific impairment or medical concern.

Another of the many failings of my sidebar is that it was set up to privilege the voices of disabled people writing about disability, and generally places nondisabled bloggers who also write on disability in a separate listing ("gimp parades" and "other parades"). Except for some nondisabled people who focus solely on disability issues and come to the topic as parents or college students. It's a muddy plan that fails to acknowledge Daisy or Feministe, for example. I'm not sure what to do about that because the list is too long to not categorize it in some manner, and since I won't divide people up by diagnoses (that won't happen), commitment to writing to the issue seems best.

Yet another sidebar dilemma, by the way, is my atrociously disappointing index. It's workable in a limited sense, but I hate having terms like "amputee," "blind," "dwarf" there. Is this a necessary evil to make the archives here accessible? Any suggestions on how to create a useful index that feels less like reducing people to diagnoses or labels would be appreciated. If someone has an index you like, leave a link to it, please.

Anyway, back to Amanda's comment. Here's a little link love for four blogs of people who have or have had cancer and are already on my sidebar:

As The Tumor Turns -- No longer being updated because of a successful prognosis.

Moving Right Along -- I can't say Sara writes about cancer, but she writes about her life and the four-year ride since it entered her life. She specifically began her blog because when she faced amputation of her leg, she went looking online for reasons to do the surgery and keep living. (That's the basic exploration of all disability blogs, imo: How do we, individually and as a society, do... all of this?) Also: bundt cake recipes and the occasional Mad Science Sunday.

My Private Casbah -- Bint has written some about cancer, though perhaps significantly, there's no clear path to that topic in her indexing. What she excels at most is intersectionality, ally-work and writing critically about the social justice issues of disability, race, sexual orientation and gender while generously engaging opposing viewpoints in comments.

Pilgrim Steps -- Again, cancer is not the point of the blog but part of the writer's history. Jana also takes incredible flower photos. And recently she's written eloquently about her Mormon heritage and Prop 8. And this is a must-read on how some Mormon elders equate homosexuality with disability because both groups are just too broken to marry and attain full stature in heaven.

And I'm adding these two cancer blogs to my sidebar. Other recommendations welcome:

The Assertive Cancer Patient
Not Just About Cancer