Manling Williams was born in 1979 as Manling Tsang. She tended to go by the nickname "Ling" while growing up. As a child, she was diagnosed with various learning disabilities and experienced many challenges academically while in school. Williams was the result of an unwanted pregnancy between her two parents, and she was nearly aborted. Ultimately, she was born into a family that didn't want her, and they treated her as such throughout her childhood with copious amounts of verbal and physi...

The Cruel and Reparative Possibilities of Failure brings together a variety of scholars and research across disciplines, with an emphasis on communication and gender studies, to work toward reimagining the idea of failure. Contributors consider failure as both a space for growth and repair and as a space from which hope can emerge. The collection is divided into five parts, investigating failure as consumption; failure as media; failure as pedagogy; failure as narrative; and final...