It’s July! When I think of July, I think of two things, Canada Day (because I’m Canadian) and Disability Pride Month.

For this month, I’ll be sharing a book lists both about Canada and about Disability Justice.

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July is Disability Pride Month and is an opportunity to celebrate all those who have a disability and reflect on what disability means.

Disability Pride Month started in the United States of America as an annual celebration of the passing of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) in July 1990. The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits any discrimination based on an individual’s disability, it also requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations and that public accommodations are accessible.

The ADA was a huge step forward for the disabled communities, and was only possible by the work done by many activists. One of the most public demonstrations was the Capitol Crawl, where a group of physically disabled activists shed their mobility devices and pulled or crawled their way up the 100 steps of the Capitol Building.

Learning about disability

I’m still relatively new to the world of disability justice (DJ), and I’m keen to continue learning more.

The most consistent message I’ve heard from the DJ community is that accessibility is good for everyone, not just disabled individuals. Accessibility makes everyone’s lives better and easier.

One of the examples I often think of is closed captioning or subtitles. It was originally made for individuals that are hard of hearing or deaf, but now everyone uses and enjoys using them. I love having captions on social media videos so that I can still enjoy the video without turning the volume up.

Not to mention that most, if not all, people will be disabled at some point in their lives, either because they get sick or injured, or due to old age.

We shouldn’t have to benefit from these changes to see them as worthwhile. If disabled individuals need accessibility, that should be enough to justify it.

The fact that we all benefit from increased accessibility adds to the value. Plus I think most of us are primarily focused on ourselves (unfortunately), and sometimes the best way to get more people involved is to show how it affects them too.

The great thing about reading is that if there’s something you want to learn about, there’s books (or online resources) available for you to learn about it.

I’ve curated five nonfiction books about disability in the list below. They can serve as an intro to the world of disability justice or a way to delve deeper.

Five nonfiction books about disability

Here’s a list of five nonfiction books about disability.

1. Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer (2013)
2. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare (2017)
3. Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig (2020)
4. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century edited by Alice Wong (2020)
5. The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2022)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013)

by Alison Kafer

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Profile at UTexas
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
    • About the term Crip
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure (2017)

by Eli Clare

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure-the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed. Cure serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds. The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure. Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body (2020)

by Rebekah Taussig

A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity.

Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century (2020)

Edited by Alice Wong

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.

From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Disability Visibility Project
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (2022)

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha follows up their incredible book Care Work with The Future Is Disabled. Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about the last two years of surviving COVID-19 as a disabled femme of color in an ableist world that isn’t interested in protecting disabled folks. They also discuss mutual aid and disabled joy in the face of isolation and discrimination.

The pandemic has been incredibly difficult for disabled people who have been asked to “take one for the team” by wider society. Piepzna-Samarasinha writes encouragement to disabled folks, relishing in our community’s creativity in our fight for survival. They also mourn those lost in the pandemic and the care crisis so many of us still face.

Links:

• You can find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Author’s Website
  • Wikipedia
    • On the author
• You can buy the book here on Amazon.

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.