This document provides an overview and discussion questions for the reading assignment "Good Kings Bad Kings: Disability Monologues" by Julia Miele Rodas. It outlines the main characters, plot, settings, and themes of the text. The document discusses themes of disability invisibility such as characters being reduced, dehumanized, and made invisible. It provides example quotations showing disability being ignored and people with disabilities being treated without dignity. The document instructs students to work in groups, choose a theme, find supporting quotations, and draw connections to another text.

1. QUESTIONS ⏛ COMMENTS ⏛ QUOTATIONS
• What do you NOTICE about this book?
• What INTERESTS you?
• What do your questions, comments, or quotations
from the reading reveal about what ATTRACTS your
attention?
• Write down KEY WORDS or phrases from your notes:
What THEMES begin to appear?

2. UPCOMING WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
due April 12

3. GOOD KINGS
BAD KINGS:
DISABILITY
MONOLOGUES
Julia Miele Rodas
Lehman College
Spring 2022

4. SETTING

5. SETTING
• Where?
• When?
PLOT
• What happens in the story?
• What’s the sequence of
action?
CHARACTERS
• Who are the
main characters?
OVERVIEW

6. ILLC
• Illinois Learning & Life Skills Center

7. WILLOWBROOK STATE
SCHOOL
“Warehousing” disabled people,
including disabled children is an
ongoing social, economic, and political
issue.

8. NURSING
HOMES
PROFIT
FROM
EXPLOITATION
OF DISABLED
CLIENTS

9. ABUSIVE PRACTICES IN “THERAPEUTIC”
SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS

10. CHARACTERS
• Yessenia Lopez
• Joanne Madsen
• Ricky Hernandez
• Michelle Volkman
• Teddy Dobbs
• Mía Oviedo
• Jimmie Kendrick

11. MORE CHARACTERS
• Mrs. Schmidt
• Mrs. Phoebe
• Louie
• Jerry
• Benedicta
• Cheri

12. DISABILITY THEORY

13. Of Mice & Men

14. PLOT
NARRATIVE UNFOLDS THROUGH A SEQUENCE OF
INTERCONNECTED MONOLOGUES

15. PLOT: KEY NARRATIVE EVENTS
• Mia raped by Jerry, ILLC aide
• Mia and Teddy break up
• Joanne begins to investigate fraud
and wrongdoing at ILLC
• Jimmie takes Yessenia to hear her
sing
• Fight between Yessenia and her
roommate leads to room change
• What else?
• relationship between Joanne and
Ricky unfolds
• Michelle starts to change her mind
about her work

16. THEMES

17. THEME:
DISABILITY
IN/VISIBILITY
• How are disabled characters
reduced or made invisible?

18. QUOTATIONS AS EVIDENCE:
DISABILITY IGNORED, DEHUMANIZED, MADE INVISIBLE
• About Louie stealing Teddy’s money: “It don’t do no good to complain. They just say ‘I
didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!’ and you can’t prove it they did” (Nussbaum 39).
• “… he said if I showed higher recruitment numbers he would increase my bonus from
$300 to $350 per bed filled …” (Nussbaum 94).
• Jimmie trying to get another aide not to smoke around the kids: “‘Hey, Candy. You might
want to think about putting that thing out. We got children on oxygen here, remember?’
She looks at me and, I swear to God, aims a stream of smoke right at my face”
(Nussbaum 124).
COMPARE:
• Of Mice and Men, complaints about Candy’s dog: “I wish someone would kill me if I got
to be old and a cripple …”

19. ADDITIONAL THEMES?
• prison, imprisonment, punishment; being trapped, locked up, isolated;
institutionalization
• romance, sexuality, relationships, love
• language use, slurs, reclaimed epithet, politics of disability language
• money
• fantasy lives, heaven, disability utopias
• loneliness, solitude, exclusion
• injustice
• disability advocacy, politics, identity
• violence

20. WORKING IN GROUPS:
EACH PERSON OR GROUP CHOOSES A THEME TO
PURSUE
FIND QUOTATIONS THAT ILLUSTRATE THAT THEME
DRAW A CONNECTION TO ANOTHER TEXT
FOR THIS UNIT
ACTIVITY