It gives a brief account of the necessity to mask her identity and her helplessness in social gatherings. Samantha Abeels My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir, talks about her life as a person and a student with Dyscalculia. Disability in literature is not yet widely talked about and Cognitive impairment and their stereotypes are often considered a taboo in India and are not represented widely like physical disabilities. It came into existence in the 1990s, after the passage of the Americans with Disability Act.
It takes its origin from Queer theory and Postcolonialism. I learned from her experiences the importance of self advocacy, accepting her learning disability and using accommodations to be successful in college. Disability studies is one of the emerging branches in literature. While she couldn’t understand math concepts, she was gifted and a talented writer and this made it even more difficult for her learning disability to be identified. One would think that things would have changed dramatically since this book was published in 2003 but unfortunately, many of the situations in this book, continue to be experienced by parents and children today. The description of her mother’s efforts to get her daughter the services she needed, and teachers who meant well but didn’t understand what a learning disability was, are all relatable to parents and teachers of students with learning disabilities. Even though she has the specific learning disability of Dyscalculia, her experiences are similar to those who experience dyslexia and other learning disabilities. As I read this memoir, I found myself underlining passages that I could relate to. This was my first introduction to the struggles of Dyscalculia. Here was an intelligent, college educated woman, who could not tell time or understand money. Many years ago I heard Samantha Abeel speak at the Learning Disabilities Association of America’s annual conference in Chicago. This is how we begin our journey into the experiences of Samantha Abeel, and her memoir, My Thirteenth Winter.
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