A Giveaway & A Chance To Rest and Heal

I am giving away 100 kindle copies of my new book on Goodreads. You can enter the giveaway on Goodreads here.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

.

Prologue

A few years ago, my aunt became disabled. I helped her, naturally.?

“I had no idea you knew so much about disability income,” she said to me during one of my visits to her in the hospital. She only knew I did some kind of public interest law.??

I asked her why she didn’t apply for disability earlier and go on a paid medical leave. She could have killed herself from overwork.?????

“I was worried about money. I didn’t know I could get disability income during a medical leave. And I wanted to work, Andy. I didn’t want to be disabled. I have worked my whole life. I was scared. All the information about disability was so confusing. I didn’t know where to start.”

I told her a story that I sometimes tell my clients.

Imagine it is springtime, and you have been invited to a party in a rural town called Bountiful. It is so secluded and far away, the map on your iPhone won’t get you there.

You go online and find a map of Bountiful from the federal government. But it only contains the federal highways.

You are disappointed, because you know you could use the state roads too. But those are on a separate state map.

Then a friend tells you about the pretty little country roads within the county line, but you can only find them on the county map.

You see the task in front of you and frown: get the maps, scale them, put them together and locate the intersections. You don’t want to do this. You call the host for help, and you are told, “Oh, but that’s how everybody does it!”

“And that’s how everybody does it when it comes to applying for disability income,” I said. “Think of the federal highway as Social Security benefits, the state road as State Disability benefits, and the county road as commercial disability insurance.”

I beamed, satisfied with my own explanation.

“Jeez. How are we supposed to figure these things out, especially when we’re sick?”

I pointed to my head, “All the roads are here. I can tell you where to go and how to get there.”

“You are such a show-off, Andy.”

We laughed.

She asked what I had been doing all these years. Generations of family drama had separated us.

“I work at a nonprofit. We help low-income folks get disability benefits when they have physical or mental problems.”

“So, what about people who are not low income—like me? How would I get help if you were not my nephew?”?

I didn’t say anything. The truth was that most American workers find little help, if any.

Silently, she looked away. She whispered that her company didn’t help her. They even tried to get rid of her. She felt betrayed, especially by her friend who worked in the human resources department.

“Your company isn’t doing anything new. It’s not personal.” I spoke in Cantonese, our native tongue.??

“They are heartless.”

At the time, I agreed with her. Now that I am older, I see things differently. The individual is not heartless, but society demands productivity and discourages humaneness. Trapped inside the society, we—like Ionesco’s rhinos—have lost touch with our humanity.?

?

The Idea of a Book

That night, I strolled along Portola Drive overlooking San Francisco’s downtown, thinking about my aunt. I wished there were some way to cheer her up. My brother told me once about how much this aunt loved self-help books. A guidebook on disability would be perfect for her.

On my way to the bookstore, I imagined the perfect guidebook. It would explain when and why workers should take a paid medical leave and how to replace their lost wages with disability income. It would explain the different types of disability income, when to apply for them, and how. It would unite the different maps of my Bountiful story. It would explain job and health insurance protections as well. It would dispel the many myths about disability that have ruined lives. It would help workers avoid common mistakes. It would teach them self-advocacy skills, the same ones that disability attorneys like me teach our clients.

As a disability attorney, I had never thought of buying such a book, just as I had grown up in New York City and never bothered going to the Statue of Liberty. My visit to the bookstore was a surprise. There weren’t many guidebooks on disability, even though there were more than 8 million US workers on Social Security disability benefits, not including all the disabled workers on other types of disability benefits. Those eight million also didn’t include people whose claims were denied. I did not find one book that provided an integrated overview of the federal, state, and commercial disability benefits.

I couldn’t buy a book that didn’t exist, so I sent my aunt flowers instead. Turns out she was allergic. But I made up for it—I got her disability income. For many years, every time she thanked me for helping her, I would think about that nonexistent guidebook.?

.

.

To learn more about the book, visit its amazon page.