On Saturday, March 16, two-time Paralympic gold medalist Patty Cisneros Prevo came to Thomas Jefferson Middle School to read from her book Tenacious: Fifteen Adventures Alongside Disabled Athletes for the assembled crowd. She followed the reading with a demonstration of how to use a basketball wheelchair. Residents from across Valparaiso filled the bleachers of Thomas Jefferson Middle School’s gym to participate in the free event. This event was hosted by the City of Valparaiso as part of their initiative to recognize March as Disability Awareness Month.
Mayor Jon Costasoffered his thoughts about the event.
City of Valparaiso Author Reading from “Tenacious” and Wheelchair Basketball Demonstration 2024
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“We're excited to host Disability Awareness Month here in March,” Costas said. “This is something that Mayor Murphy started a couple of years ago and it's been a really great experience for Valpo. It brings the community together in a lot of different ways and highlights opportunities for us to be better allies to our friends and neighbors with disabilities.. Disability Awareness Month has also helped businesses better understand how they can better accommodate those with disabilities, which is good for the community as a whole.”
During the presentation, Prevo, a wheelchair user whose spinal cord was injured in a car accident when she was 18 years old, shared the inspiration behind Tenacious. While working intermittently as a fourth-grade teacher, she noticed that disabled people were not present in any of the books she was reading to her students and her children. Determined to remedy this issue, she began writing a children’s book that starred disabled athletes of all ages who she had met and befriended over the years. She completed Tenacious after about six-and-a-half years’ work and it hit store shelves last year. The final product is a picture book that features rhyming couplets and colorful images for younger children as well as more in-depth text for older readers.
Prevo shared more about the effect that she hoped Tenacious would have on her young readers.
“The whole purpose of Tenacious was to bring disability to the forefront in children's literature,” Prevo said. “I think it's a social identity that we don't talk about and tend to shy away from, which only perpetuates the negative connotation around disability. I was hoping that Tenacious would start those conversations for the youngest readers and help them understand early on that disability is just another social identity like gender, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity. I wanted them to know it's okay to recognize that people are different and that we should embrace those differences.”
After reading through Tenacious and telling the audience some more information about the featured athletes, Prevo held a brief Q&A session. She then invited three of her good friends from the Chicago Skyhawks NWBA (National Wheelchair Basketball Association) team to demonstrate the basics of wheelchair basketball. Attendees of all ages got a chance to learn how to shoot, dribble, and pass while using a professional wheelchair basketball player’s chair.
Prevo is looking forward to completing the next installment of the Tenacious series which will feature disabled musicians. She also plans to write two more books that raise awareness about disability, Elliot’s Chair and All of Apollonia. Prevo explained that speaking at events such as this is important to her because they allows her to give back to her community.
“When I transferred to Valparaiso University in 1997, the Athletics Director Dr. William Steinbrecher, and the rest of the staff there provided me with a safe environment to explore my disability identity and pursue my wheelchair basketball career,” Prevo said. “Now, I can come back to the community that embraced me from the beginning to showcase the sport and what I've done in the last 25 years. Everything has come full circle and I'm really thankful that I can put on these community events. These programs make the biggest impact because they reach kids and because they can restart those crucial conversations in the community.”
As the event drew to a close, Prevo chatted with audience members and signed their copies of Tenacious while other guests continued to try their hand at wheelchair basketball.
For more information on Tenacious: Fifteen Adventures Alongside Disabled Athletes and Prevo’s upcoming books, visit www.pattycisnerosprevo.com. For more information on the City of Valparaiso’s Disability Awareness Month recognition, visit https://www.ci.valparaiso.in.us/1756/Disability-Awareness-Inclusion.