The History of Idiot

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Adelheid was taken to Grafaneck, which was the first killing centre for adults. It's a horrible story on so many levels. And I'm really interested in your unpacking of the word idiot. Sometimes it's interesting how we kind of like having that word. That's a dark insight into the self. But nevertheless, I think we're all still coming out with it.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

This week Katherine chats to writer Joanne Limburg about the ways that we can find connection in the experience of outsidership.

While writing her astonishing new book, Letters To My Weird Sisters, Joanne sought out women from the past who were marked out as ‘weird’, from Virginia Woolf, who was unable to choose the ‘right’ ballgown, to Katharina Kepler, who was put on trial for witchcraft. Drawing on her Jewish heritage, Joanne urges us all to assert the humanity of those who seem unfathomably different to us - the physically and intellectually disabled people who were considered to be ‘life unworthy of life’ in the Holocaust.

There is so much hope in Joanne’s project to own and cherish her own ‘weirdness’, and to find a kind of sisterhood there, stretching across time. Many listeners will find their community here, too.

JOANNE LINKS

Online

Twitter

Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

KATHERINE LINKS

Shop all books from The Wintering Sessions

The Wintering Sessions

Katherine's writing class