Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson
With partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, the author lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they're whispering behind her back.
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith E. Heumann
The author recounts her journey from polio patient to prominent disability activist. While it follows her life from its beginnings in Brooklyn, the book focuses on three distinct periods in her development as an activist as it recounts her experience fighting both prejudice and discrimination while staying positive through negative experiences.
The Call of the Wrens by Jenni L. Walsh
Told in alternating narratives that converge in a single life-changing moment, this book is a vivid, emotional saga of love, war, secrets and resilience. Marion joins the Women’s Royal Navy Service (the “Wrens”) as a motorcycle dispatch rider on the Western Front, assigned to train and deliver carrier pigeons to the front line. She and her childhood best friend, Eddie, dream of a future after the war – until tragedy strikes. A society girl, Evelyn has overcome a childhood disability and has found her true passion in automobile racing. When England enters WWII, Evelyn sees an opportunity to use her skills as a dispatch rider. Meanwhile, a fellow Wren shows up at Marion’s door with an unwelcome call to return to her service.
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
This novel follows the early life of young Philip Carey, who was born with a club foot, as he grows up in England at the very end of the 19th century. It incorporates elements of both realism and modernism and has been interpreted as taking autobiographical inspiration drawn from the author’s own life. By describing events from Philip’s life, he develops themes related to social class, loneliness, and the search for purpose and meaning in life.
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel by Robert Dugoni
Born with red pupils and given the nickname “Devil Boy’ or Sam “Hell” by his classmates, Sam Hill always sees the world through different eyes. “God’s will” is what his mother called his ocular albinism. Her words were of little comfort, but Sam persevered, buoyed by his mother’s devout faith, his father’s practical wisdom, and his two other misfit friends.
Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines by Jonathan Mooney
In this confessional and often hilarious book, a neuro-diverse writer, advocate, and father meditates on his life, offering the radical message that we should stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed. The author blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn. As a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was 12, the realization that he wasn’t the problem – the system and the concept of normal were – saved his life and fundamentally changed his outlook.
Winning the Disability Challenge: A Practical Guide to Successful Living by John F. Tholen
Losing the capacity to work can be a life-changing event, one that can challenge a person’s most basic notions about life itself. Each year, as a result of injury or illness, millions of American workers and an ever-growing number of Iraq war veterans are confronted with a profound sense of helplessness, insecurity, and self-doubt stemming from their inability to continue work. This book charts a course of action to personal security and self-fulfillment and guides the disabled worker through both the emotional trauma of occupational disability and the complex world of disability rights and resources.
Hang On!: Navigating the Emotional Roller Coaster of Raising a Child With a Disability by Melvin J. Miller
Every three minutes, a child is born with a disability. Every three minutes, a parent is tossed upon an emotional roller coaster of raising a child with a disability. The steep climbs and sharp curves of emotions are not something a parent is prepared for. These parents will flounder around in a maelstrom of negative emotions for months or years until they can finally work their way out. This book addresses these issues to allow parents to recognize when they are in the grasp of a negative emotion and how to overcome its impact.
Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally by Emily Ladau
People with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us – disabled and nondisabled alike – don’t know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. What are the appropriate ways to think, talk, and ask about disability? This is a friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about.
Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong
This collection of writings by disabled activists and advocates, sharing their unique experiences and perspectives, offers powerful insights into the disability rights movement and challenges ableist norms that exist in society.
Soul Jar: Thirty-One Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors edited by Annie Carl
All too often, science fiction and fantasy stories ignore – or cure – characters with disabilities. Featuring 31 stories by disabled authors, this book imagines such wonders as a shapeshifter on a first date, skin that sprouts orchid buds, and a cereal-box demon. An insulin pump diverts an undead mob. An autistic teen sets out to discover the local cranberry bog’s sinister secret. A pizza delivery on Mars goes horribly wrong. This thrillingly peculiar collection sparkles with humor, heart, and insight, all within the context of disability representation.
Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride by Nadina LaSpina
This memoir by a disability rights activist recounts her early years in her native Sicily, where she contracts polio as a baby, making her the object of well-meaning pity and the target of messages of hopelessness; to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals, where she is tortured in the quest for a cure and made to feel that her body no longer belongs to her; to her rebellion and her activism in the disability rights movement.
Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths About Disability by Melissa Blake
Sharing her truths about living with a disability, the author writes about the language used to describe disabled people, ableism, microaggressions, and their pernicious effects, and what it’s like to live in a society that not only isn’t designed for you, but actively operates to render you invisible to others.
Disability Intimacy edited by Alice Wong
Wong empowers people with disabilities to share their stories on their own terms, collecting 40 different perspectives on disability intimacy encompassing heartbreak, BDSM, queer love, and parenting. This much-anticipated sequel to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility is another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its forms.
Disability Pride by Ben Mattlin
Weaving together interviews with reportage, this book traces the evolution of societal attitudes and activist agendas around disability from a fight for civil rights to a celebration of identity and heritage. The author explores how this new wave of disability visibility and pride is furthering the cause of disability justice. Today, activists are fighting for long-term personal-assistance services and for mental-health support systems, and it's coming from a broad spectrum of perspectives.
