Expanding Upon Critical Storytelling to Inform Intersectional Disability Futures

Abstract

Critical storytelling is a methodology that has been used to disrupt and transform deficit-oriented, Western colonial master narratives about marginalized peoples. This chapter expands upon critical storytelling as conceptualized by Dr. Nicholas D. Hartlep and colleagues to explicitly include intersectional disabled youth (IDY), a term used to refer to disabled youth at the intersections of race, language, class, and other identity markers of difference in middle school through higher educational settings. To include IDY, I draw from other critical methodologies that highlight storytelling as a tool to not only disrupt white bodymind normativity but also to honor and center marginalized IDY lived experiences within schools and educational environments. These include Indigenous storywork, testimonio, Critical Race Theory’s counter-stories, and cripistemologies. I synthesize key components from each of these methodological approaches that center one’s embodied story as linked to critical storytelling and apply these to questions informed by the literature about youth with intersectional identities. From these questions and concepts connected to critical storytelling, an understanding of intersectional disability futures emerges to include key pedagogical considerations within teaching and learning that embrace IDY’s stories as knowledgemaking in current and future educational contexts. Accordingly, considerations of time, space, people, content, context, and form are analyzed for their importance in supporting IDY in cocreating and informing desired intersectional disability futures.