A plain text version of this post. Here you will find detailed image descriptions and easier-to-read versions of each book summary. If you think that any image descriptions/summaries need to be updated, please let me know!
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[ID: A book cover. The background is a pale orange colour. In the centre, a large photograph of a person with brown skin standing in front a desert under a blue sky. They have short braided brown hair swept over their left eye, and have their arms crossed over their chest, with one hand resting on the side of their face. The title “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World” is around them in large orange writing that covers the length of the photo. The subtitle “A Decolonial Memoir” is to the right their head in very small white writing. The author’s name “Shayla Lawson” is below the title, at the bottom of the photograph, in smaller yellow writing. Black text at the bottom of the cover reads, under the author’s name, reads “author of ‘this is major’, a national book critics circle award finalist”. /end]
Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability.
With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.
Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal.
Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.
[ID: A book cover. It is a dark black with faint, grey, writing over it. The writing, from top to bottom, reads: “Elsa Sjunneson” “Being Seen” “One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism” All in capitals. The “I” in “Being Seen” is designed to look like an opening of sorts, with a ray of light coming through. /end]
A deafblind writer and professor explores how the misrepresentation of disability in books, movies, and TV harms both the disabled community and everyone else.
As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. 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. And she certainly knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be.
As a media studies professor, she’s also seen the full range of blind and deaf portrayals on film, and here she deconstructs their impact, following common tropes through horror, romance, and everything in between. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.
[ID: A book cover. The background is made of simple, colourful red, cream, white, yellow and teal shapes. Large text reads, from top to bottom: “Disability Pride” in large, black capitals, “Dispatches from a Post-ADA World”in smaller, black capitals, “Ben Mattlin”, in slightly bigger red capitals. /end]
An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today and how attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In Disability Pride, disabled journalist Ben Mattlin weaves together interviews and reportage to introduce a cavalcade of individuals, ideas, and events in engaging, fast-paced prose. He traces the generation that came of age after the ADA reshaped America, and how it is influencing the future. He documents how autistic self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement upended views of those whose brains work differently. He lifts the veil on a thriving disability culture—from social media to high fashion, Hollywood to Broadway—showing how the politics of beauty for those with marginalized body types and facial features is sparking widespread change.
He also explores the movement’s shortcomings, particularly the erasure of nonwhite and LGBTQIA+ people that helped give rise to Disability Justice. He delves into systemic ableism in health care, the right-to-die movement, institutionalization, and the scourge of subminimum-wage labor that some call legalized slavery. And he finds glimmers of hope in how disabled people never give up their fight for parity and fair play.
Beautifully written, without anger or pity, Disability Pride is a revealing account of an often misunderstood movement and identity, an inclusive reexamination of society’s treatment of those it deems different.
[ID: A book cover. The background is light blue, with colourful pictures of butterflies, flowers and a house setting featured in the centre. Lower right centre of the image, a black figure in a long sleeved, billowing dress, holding a curved black walking stick in their right hand. Behind them, a drawing of a room with a table, chair, pink wall with a window, and a blank wall with an orange picture. Text on the book cover, from top to bottom, reads: The title “Crip Kinship” in large black font at the top of the image, The subtitle “The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid” in smaller black capitals, in the upper right corner of the image, The authors name “Shayda Kafai” in medium black capitals in the lower right of the image, partially overlapping the figure in the dress. /end]
The remarkable story of Sins Invalid, a performance project that centres queer disability justice.
In recent years, disability activism has come into its own as a vital and necessary means to acknowledge the power and resilience of the disabled community, and to call out ableist culture wherever it appears.
Crip Kinship explores the art activism of Sins Invalid, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performance project, and its radical imaginings of what disabled, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming bodyminds of colour can do: how they can rewrite oppression, and how they can gift us with transformational lessons for our collective survival.
Grounded in the disability justice framework, Crip Kinship investigates the revolutionary survival teachings that disabled, queer of colour community offers to all our bodyminds. From their focus on crip beauty and sexuality to manifesting digital kinship networks and crip-centric liberated zones, Sins Invalid empowers and moves us toward generating our collective liberation from our bodyminds outward.
[ID: A book cover. The background is yellow. A black and white photograph in the centre shows two young black children and a dog in front of a car. The title “Sounds Like Home” is at the tope in large, curvy black writing. The subtitle “Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South” is written in small orange writing, on three black bars on the right side of the cover. The author’s name “Mary Herring Wright” is written in curvy black writing, slightly smaller than the title, at the bottom of the cover. /end]
Mary Herring Wright’s memoir adds an important dimension to the current literature in that it is a story by and about an African American deaf child. The author recounts her experiences growing up as a deaf person in Iron Mine, North Carolina, from the 1920s through the 1940s. Her story is unique and historically significant because it provides valuable descriptive information about the faculty and staff of the North Carolina school for Black deaf and blind students from the perspective of a student as well as a student teacher. In addition, this engrossing narrative contains details about the curriculum, which included a week-long Black History celebration where students learned about important Blacks such as Madame Walker, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and George Washington Carver. It also describes the physical facilities as well as the changes in those facilities over the years. In addition, Sounds Like Home occurs over a period of time that covers two major events in American history, the Depression and World War II.
Wright’s account is one of enduring faith, perseverance, and optimism. Her keen observations will serve as a source of inspiration for others who are challenged in their own ways by life’s obstacles.
[ID: A book cover. The background is white. A painting stretches from the bottom of the cover to bottom of top quarter. In the upper quarter of the cover, text reads: The author’s name “Jasbir K. Puar” is at the top in black writing. The title “The Right to Maim” is immediately below this in red caps. The subtitle “Debility, Capacity, Disability” is immediately below this in smaller, yellow caps. The painting is immediately below this. The background is a dark cream. It appears to show a humanoid figure climbing a mound. Two other figures appear to be falling off the mound. There are splashes of red paint around the mound and the figure on it. /end]
In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar’s analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability’s interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.
[ID: A book cover. The background is a close photograph of some kind of knitted garment, and its label. The garment is blue. The label is in the centre. Text on the label reads: The title “Uncomfortable Labels” in large black caps The subtitle “My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman” in smaller black caps, lower left of this The author’s name “Laura Kate Dale” at the bottom of the label in black writing. A smaller label attached to the bottom has a single, black capitalised “M” written on it. /end]
“So while the assumption when I was born was that I was or would grow up to be a neurotypical heterosexual boy, that whole idea didn’t really pan out long term.”
In this candid, first-of-its-kind memoir, Laura Kate Dale recounts what life is like growing up as a gay trans woman on the autism spectrum. From struggling with sensory processing, managing socially demanding situations and learning social cues and feminine presentation, through to coming out as trans during an autistic meltdown, Laura draws on her personal experiences from life prior to transition and diagnosis, and moving on to the years of self-discovery, to give a unique insight into the nuances of sexuality, gender and autism, and how they intersect.
Charting the ups and downs of being autistic and on the LGBT spectrum with searing honesty and humour, this is an empowering, life-affirming read for anyone who’s felt they don’t fit in.
[ID: A book cover. A photograph of stones can be seen. Over it, a dark box stretching from left to right at the top of the image. Text in the box reads: “Brilliant Imperfection”, in large caps. “Brilliant” is in green, “Imperfection is in white. “Grappling With Cure”, in small, green caps. “Eli Clare”, in white caps. /end]
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.
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I don't highlight the non-fiction section of the archive enough, so I think this is a perfect opportunity.
A plain text version of this post exists here, featuring more detailed image descriptions of each book cover and easier-to-read versions of every summary.
Books on this list:
‘How to Live Free in a Dangerous World’- Lawson, Shayla
‘Being Seen’- Sjunneson, Elsa
‘Disability Pride’- Mattlin, Ben
‘Crip Kinship’- Kafai, Shayda
‘Sounds Like Home’- Wright, Mary Herring
‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.
‘Uncomfortable Labels’- Dale, Laura Kate
'Brilliant Imperfections'- Clare, Eli
All of these books and more can be found on the Disability Book Archive.
Happy Disability Pride Month!
A real, unbutchered pain scale.
Based on this, my base level of pain is a 7. Sounds pretty accurate
Open captions. Eye contact. Proper closed captions. Audio description. ~1 minute.
From the video's info section:
Lawrence Carter-Long is the director of communications at Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF). In this video interview, he shines a spotlight on how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) came to be through the persistent work of disability activists. “The draft legislation for the Americans with Disabilities Act was put together in the mid-’80s. And then, right, 1990, over 20 years later, what did it take to pass that law? Disability being disruptive. Disabled people saying, ‘No, no, no. We’re not going to be taken for granted, we’re not going to be left behind, and we’re going to show you how determined and how dedicated we are.’ Those are decades between advances, decades between real progress. We’ve waited long enough. The time to be included, the time for this to change is now. And you can be a part of it. You should be a part of it.”
BTW, that Disability and Philanthropy Initiative is another thing the Biden Administration has done to try for more equity for marginalized groups -- including the Disabled.
It's arguable whether or not the philanthropy model is a good thing (personally, I've grown increasingly skeptical of it in my radical middle age). But this is another example of how the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are not the same.
What is happening with section 504? And what you can do about it? Section 504 is under attack. If you live in any of these states, you can call your representatives.
DISABILITY INJUSTICE AFFECTS EVERYONE. You shouldn’t care “just because” you could be disabled one day. You should care *now*, because this will come back to everyone.
Images from @/myelasticheart on Instagram
1815-1817 - Formal Deaf Education Begins in the U.S
1829 - Louis Braille Invents the Raise Point Alphabet
1907 - Eugenic Sterilization Law for People with Disabilities is Enacted
1932 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Person with a Disability, Elected President
1934-1940 - National Federation of the Blind Founded
1935 - Social Security Act Signed into Law
1939 - Nazi Program Kills Thousands of People with Disabilities
1946 - National Mental Health Foundation Founded
1947 - Paralyzed Veterans of America organization founded
1954 - Brown v Board of Education
1963 - Community Mental Health Act signed into Law
1965 - Medicaid Assistance for People with Disabilities and those with Low-Income
1968 - The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968
1973 - Disabled in Action, PA founded
1974 - Last of "Ugly Laws" Repealed
1975 - The Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act Enacted
1975 - United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons
1978 - National Council on Disability Established
1982 - United Nations Encourages Global Equality and Participation for the Disabled
1990 - Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is signed into law.
Cripplepunk, madpunk, and neuropunk aren't just "I'm disabled and also left-leaning". It's a specific realm of activism rooted in dismantling the systems that put disabled, mad, sick, etc folks at a disadvantage in society. This mean not only being against the very systems that harm us but also understanding their colonial origins and continued racist legacies. (Anti-ableism, anti-sanism, anti-psych, etc). This means not only just identifying and finding pride in your disability but also building and constantly evolving your understanding of disability and diversity and learning how you can change your worldview to accurately highlight the struggles of disabled people. (EVEN if it sometimes means you will be uncomfortable or unsure of unlearning some kinds of hate.)
What is spoon theory and where did it come from?
According to Wikipedia, 'Spoon theory is a metaphor describing the amount of physical or mental energy that a person has available for daily activities and tasks, and how it can become limited. '
digital illustration of a disabled nonbinary person with leg braces. They have a green mullet and are wearing a black t-shirt, purple cargo pants, green chunky heels and a green belt. There's text that reads, 'being disabled shouldn't equal being poor.'
This is a fascinating article about how the Medici, who had a hereditary mobility condition, adapted the architecture of Florence for disability access:
Florence’s Medici had a family curse: an agonizing hereditary medical condition causing torturous joint pain and severe mobility restrictions, so it was agony to stand, walk, or even hold a pen. Yes, Renaissance Florence, cradle of the Renaissance, was run by disabled people from a sickbed. The famous Cosimo had to have servants carry him through his own home, and used to shout every time they neared doorway. When asked, “Why do you shout before we go through a doorway?” He answered “Because if I shout after you slam my head into the stone lintel it doesn’t help.”
Hello, my name is Katie Lindsey and this blog is part of my Intersectionality & Identities College Course Final for Spring 2025
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