Wheelchair basketball offers an ethnographic space through which this article connects a familial story of survival to the author’s evolving engagement with disability. The author has been looking for role models, for people who might offer guidance to help his family cope with his daughter’s disability. The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project about wheelchair sports. Melvin’s perseverance in the face of adversity illustrates the dynamic interface between agency and structure and suggests a way to move beyond the “supercrip” critique that is prevalent in the disability studies literature. Melvin’s story and others like his have emboldened the author and helped him to view social difference as enabling rather than as disabling.
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