{"id":193344,"date":"2017-05-18T12:50:26","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T19:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=193344"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:22:18","slug":"dvp-interview-lavaun-heaster-and-cheryl-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/05\/18\/dvp-interview-lavaun-heaster-and-cheryl-green\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green record a conversation for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on April 22, 2015. In this clip, Lavaun and Cheryl talk about common stereotypes about disability, the invisibility of learning disabilities, and art and disability.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-soundcloud\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F323267005&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h3>Text Transcript<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: The only disability is a bad attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: I love Stella Young&#8217;s response, &#8220;No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs ever turned it into a ramp.&#8221; My name is Cheryl Green. I&#8217;m 40 years old. Today is April 22, 2015 and we&#8217;re in the San Francisco Public Library at StoryCorps<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: Hi, my name is Lavaun Heaster. Also known as Lavaun Benavidez-Heaster according to what I feel like any given day. I have known Cheryl for about 3 years. We met through the Display Arts &amp; Culture Project when we&#8217;re planning a fundraising event. And, she helped me paint my [laughter] bathroom. Where she painted her hair, I painted her arm. I painted my arms, my feet, my hands, my tee-shirt and many other things because it&#8217;s kind of entertaining to have someone [laughing] who&#8217;s legally blind painting, when someone else do that without peripheral vision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: I would also like to add that you did paint the walls as well. Both of us did some painting of walls in the middle of all of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: Yeah they&#8217;re done now.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: Yeah [laughter]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: Lovely orchid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music stop]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: Is that the color? I thought it was mauve? Is that similar to\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: It\u2019s a mauvy-orchid. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: [laughter]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: I don\u2019t know! I\u2019m legally blind, why do you expect me to know what the color is:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: Because you\u2019re a visual person. You\u2019re a visual artist and you\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: I know, I\u2019m teasing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: Oh, and I don&#8217;t get jokes because my brain injury aahhh!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: [laughter]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music fades in and out] <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: I consider myself a disability artist both because I&#8217;m disabled and because my art and my activism focus on disability experiences and disability culture. \u00a0And you, Lavaun, \u00a0you have disabilities as well but you don&#8217;t actually call yourself a disability artist, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: No. I consider myself an artist. I am an artist that happens to have disabilities but I don&#8217;t want people looking at my art and seeing my disability and then going, &#8220;Oh my gosh, someone who&#8217;s legally blind did that?&#8221; I do have a disability, and I am fine with just, going out and saying, yeah, \u2018I\u2019m legally blind!\u2019 But I don\u2019t &#8212; that\u2019s not my focus, because I don\u2019t want people buying from that \u2018poor crippled person\u2019 who is, you know, inspiring the world with her art.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: \u2018Her special art.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: \u2018Oh so special!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: \u2018Oh my gosh, how did she do that? I\u2019m going to buy it just because I would just be able to live if I had to live like her.\u2019 Yeah, it\u2019s really &#8212; people certainly are intending to compliment the work, but it\u2019s very backhanded compliments. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music ends, airplane seat belt alert sound effect]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: My first experience with disability were actually &#8230; when I was about two and a half or so, I started reading See Dick Run. Now, unless you&#8217;re old like me, you don&#8217;t know about the Dick and Jane books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: [laughter] I know them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: [laughter] But yes. The Dick and Jane books! I could read the Dick and Jane books. but I hadn\u2019t progressed into kindergarten. First grade I didn&#8217;t progress. Second grade I didn&#8217;t progress. Third grade I didn&#8217;t progress and they were like, &#8220;Oh, maybe we need to stick her to special education.&#8221; When I finally lost my vision and had an assessment done, all of a sudden they came up with a diagnosis. I have written expression disorder! And this is actually the disability that has affected my work life the most because I&#8217;m always staying hours late and not charging my employer for it. And, I struggle. And I &#8212; even though I know I have this disability, I still, I go into shame and all this stuff because it&#8217;s something that people don&#8217;t really understand. It&#8217;s a hidden disability but somehow learning disabilities, &#8220;Well, can&#8217;t you just figure out when to use a comma and when to use a colon?&#8221; &#8220;No, I can&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: Anything that has \u201ccan\u2019t you just\u201d in it is automatically not going to work!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: \u2018Oh! Here\u2019s the rule! Just apply it!\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: \u2018Just do it how I do it! C\u2019mon! Yeah!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: \u2018Just do it!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: I&#8217;ve never heard you tell a story about anyone saying, \u2018Lavaun, can&#8217;t you just see a little better? Can&#8217;t you just focus that eye?\u2019 And yet they will tell you, &#8220;can&#8217;t you just figure out how to write these words and these punctuation marks?&#8221; And it&#8217;s so interesting. I get it all the time too around my impairments that people can&#8217;t see. \u2018Why don&#8217;t you just calm down?\u2019 \u2018Just relax.\u2019 \u2018Just breathe.\u2019 There are certain disabilities or certain impairments that everybody is so entitled to \u2018can&#8217;t you just do it the way I do it,\u2019 but then other ones you get a pass. I mean, do people ever tell you just see better?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: Actually I have had one situation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: [gasp!] Oh don&#8217;t tell me, who said it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music ends]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: A huge value of mine, even though I\u2019m not a \u201cdisability artist,\u201d that people who are obviously seen because they are obviously there but who we choose to actually look away from, not listen to, somehow make them feel invisible. That that gets brought out. And that\u2019s what I do in my art, but it\u2019s also what I do in my advocacy through my work at the city of Portland through just, living and breathing and conversations I get in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: It\u2019s funny. You said we met through the fundraiser which is different from how I remembered it but doesn\u2019t &#8212; that&#8217;s not worth anything. I remembered that &#8230;No, you&#8217;re right. Well. it was a fundraiser related to the Disability Art and Culture project&#8217;s festival which is called the Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: And it was the Sex, Love and Disability fundraiser.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: You&#8217;re right! The Sex, Love and Disability Fundraiser which sometimes goes by Love, Sex and Disability fundraiser.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: Oh! That&#8217;s probably the right term. I don&#8217;t pay attention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Cheryl Green<\/strong>: I think they changed it to Sex, Love and Disability so that it wasn&#8217;t LSD.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lavaun Heaster<\/strong>: [laughter]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Music Credit:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear: Buddy Guy (<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Buddy Guy by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/soundofpicture.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> is licensed under a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/3.0\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">. )<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear: Feather <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">(Feather by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/soundofpicture.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> is licensed under a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/3.0\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">. )<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear: Grebe <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">(Grebe by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/soundofpicture.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Podington Bear<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> is licensed under a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/3.0\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">. .)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Source: Freemusicarchive.org<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><b>Support Disability Media and Culture <\/b><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\"><b>DONATE<\/b><\/a><b> to the Disability Visibility Project\u2122!<\/b><\/h2>\n<h2><b>Suggested Reference<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122. (2015, April 22). DVP Interview: Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green. Retrieved from:\u00a0http:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-Ois<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Image Description<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">A photo featuring Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green taken on April 22, 2015. The woman on the left is Lavaun Heaster. Her family is Hispanic, Native American and white, and she appears to be white. She is wearing a black and white cardigan with a beige tank top. Her hair is long and brown, and she is smiling at the camera. The woman on the right is Cheryl Green. She appears to be white, has long, wavy, dark brown hair, green eyes and is smiling at the camera. She is wearing a turquoise tee-shirt that says the word \u201ccriptiques\u201d printed in a black-framed rectangle.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Credits<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 by Geraldine Ah-Sue and Alice Wong with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.storycorps.org\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">www.storycorps.org<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">For any questions, please refer to the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Terms of Use<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green record a conversation for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on April 22, 2015. In this clip, Lavaun and Cheryl talk about common &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/05\/18\/dvp-interview-lavaun-heaster-and-cheryl-green\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Lavaun Heaster and Cheryl Green<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[577395113,40576,577395114,117737631,7025724,19989],"class_list":["post-193344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-cantyoujust","tag-disability","tag-disabilityandart","tag-invisibledisability","tag-learningdisability","tag-stereotypes","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/sfb003189_g1.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-Ois","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}