Accessibility and Disability Studies

Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology.

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

Still Living the Edges is an international reader that features articles, poetry, essays and visual art from women with various disabilities, from nations such as Canada, United States, Australia, Russia, United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. Disabled women are still on the edges, whether that be on the cutting edge, being pushed to the edges of society or challenging the edges, the barriers in their way. This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities, both physical and mental.

A guide for how to be a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible place.

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center.

Disability Rhetoric is the first book to view rhetorical theory and history through the lens of disability studies.

From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America. Keah Brown loves herself, but that hadn't always been the case. Born with cerebral palsy, her greatest desire used to be normalcy and refuge from the steady stream of self-hate society strengthened inside her. But after years of introspection and reaching out to others in her community, she has reclaimed herself and changed her perspective.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

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.

In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds--the intertwinement of the mental and the physical--in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

This provocative and groundbreaking book is the first of its kind to propose the concept of Eco-ability: the intersectionality of the ecological world, persons with disabilities, and nonhuman animals. Rooted in disability studies and rights, environmentalism, and animal advocacy, this book calls for a social justice theory and movement that dismantles constructed «normalcy», ableism, speciesism, and ecological destruction while promoting mutual interdependence, collaboration, respect for difference, and inclusivity of our world.

Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalism is a collection of essays from the leaders in the field of eco-ability.

Experienced by more than one billion people worldwide, disability is increasingly recognised as a human rights issue internationally.

When public services are cut, disabled people are the hardest hit, and they number 3.7 million people in the UK. In Crippled, leading commentator Frances Ryan tells the story of those most affected by this devastating regime.

A philosophical challenge to the ableist conflation of disability and pain.

Lambda Literary Award winning poet and essayist and long-time disability justice advocate Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha writes passionately and personally about disability justice in her latest book of essays.

In Intoxicated Mel Y. Chen explores the ongoing imperial relationship between race, sexuality, and disability.

Disabled Futures makes an important intervention in disability studies by taking an intersectional approach to race, gender, and disability.

This exciting new book explores the history of major mental disorders by looking at a wide range of historical and contemporary figures that have experienced mental illness. It discusses changing perceptions of mental illness and the treatments used at different historical periods from antiquity to the present day via the biographical sketches.

From the Periphery consists of nearly forty first-person narratives from activists and everyday people who describe what it's like to be treated differently by society because of their disabilities.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds--the intertwinement of the mental and the physical--in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist's journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice. From the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project "Alice Wong provides deep truths in this fun and deceptively easy read about her survival in this hectic and ableist society."

No one understands plants better than Dr. Cassandra Quave, and as a person born with multiple congenital defects who nearly lost her life at the age of three due to a staph infection, she has an intimate knowledge of the strengths and failings of modern medicine. In The Plant Hunter, Dr. Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to recount her own journey in search of natural compounds, long known to traditional healers, that could help save us all from this looming crisis.

An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the "collected schizophrenias" but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life.

A hilarious and poignant memoir grappling with family, disability, and coming of age in two closets--as a gay man and as a man living with cerebral palsy.

From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America. Keah Brown loves herself, but that hadn't always been the case. Born with cerebral palsy, her greatest desire used to be normalcy and refuge from the steady stream of self-hate society strengthened inside her. But after years of introspection and reaching out to others in her community, she has reclaimed herself and changed her perspective.

In seventeen intimate essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body--in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of--indeed, in response to--physical constraints, Brown leads a peripatetic life: the essays comprise a vivid travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy.

This collection explores the historical origins of our modern concepts of intellectual or learning disability. The essays, from some of the leading historians of ideas of intellectual disability, focus on British and European material from the Middle Ages to the late-nineteenth century and extend across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical and psychiatric histories. They investigate how precursor concepts and discourses were shaped by and interacted with their particular social, cultural and intellectual environments, eventually giving rise to contemporary ideas.

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.

Authored by one of the most respected figures in the field of personal ethnographic narrative, this book serves as both a memoir and a sociological study, telling the story of one lesbian couple's lifelong journey together.

Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality takes a humorous, intimate approach to disability through the stories, jokes, performances, and other creative expressions of people with disabilities.

In the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, one summer in the 1970s, a family--a husband and wife, their daughter, and their crippled teenage son Camilo--take in an orphan named Cosme. The boys unexpectedly fall in love, but an act of violence shatters their intimate world and changes their lives forever. Decades later, when Camilo returns to his hometown, he is haunted by his first love and the long shadow of Brazil's military dictatorship. At once an incisive and unforgiving study of Brazilian society and a fluid, queer coming-of-age story, Victor Heringer's exhilarating and moving novel is worthy of Machado de Assis.

Disabled young people will be proud to see themselves reflected in this hopeful, compelling, and insightful essay collection, adapted for young adults from the critically acclaimed adult book, Disability Visibility- First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century.

Part coming of age, part call to action, this fast-paced novel about a Deaf teenager by a Deaf author is a unique and inspiring exploration of what it means to belong. Smart, artistic, and independent, sixteen year old Piper is tired of trying to conform. Her mom wants her to be "normal," to pass as hearing, to get a good job. But in a time of food scarcity, environmental collapse, and political corruption, Piper has other things on her mind--like survival. Piper has always been told that she needs to compensate for her Deafness in a world made for those who can hear. But when she meets Marley, a new world opens up--one where Deafness is something to celebrate, and where resilience means taking action, building a community, and believing in something better.

Told in dual narrative, This Is My Brain in Love is a stunning YA contemporary romance, exploring mental health, race, and, ultimately self-acceptance.

To understand mental health, we need to talk openly about it. Because there's no single definition of crazy, there's no single experience that embodies it, and the word itself means different things--wild? extreme? disturbed? passionate?--to different people.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.