Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability, and Basketball

Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was "both the worst and best thing that happened" to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion-ultimately becoming a star athlete and playing on the U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team. InWheelchair Warrior, Juette poignant memoir is bracketed by sociologist Ronald Berger's thoughtful introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative of race, class, masculinity and identity into proper sociological context. While Juette's story never gives into despair, it does challenge the idea of the "supercrip."

Melvin Juette is Community Service Coordinator of the Deferred Prosecution Unit of the Dane County District Attorney's Office in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

Ronald J. Berger is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater