July is Disability Pride Month! What are you reading?
Image description: Three books sit on a dark brown table, photographed from above. They are stacked on top of one another and fanned out in display. The book on top is Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig. The book below that is Ariel Henley’s book A Face for Picasso. The book sitting on the bottom of the pile is We Move Together by Kelly Fritsch, Anne McGuire and Eduardo Trejos.
July is Disability Pride month, so I’m showcasing a few of my favorite books by disabled writers.
Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body, Rebekah Taussig
This book is important, because there are so few disabled people working in publishing, and therefore not many books by disabled people are published by traditional publishing houses. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before, musing on topics that you might not think intersect with disability (like teaching high schoolers and thrifting and buying a house), but always do. But it’s more than important ... it’s also laugh out loud funny and poignant and reflective and edgy and beautifully written. She writes about disability, but she also writes about motherhood and partnership and work and family. You can follow her on Instagram @sitting_pretty
A Face for Picasso, Ariel Henley
This book fundamentally changed how I see my own body and how I tell my own story. Henley is young but she's experienced a lot of adult things, and some of them are very difficult to read. The narratives of disabled people "overcoming" are common and are mostly sugarcoated. The truth is often much more difficult to process. But it must be heard. Henley tells her story with bracing honesty, which is somehow even harder than it looks. I hope people listen.
We Move Together, Anne McGuire, Kelly Fritsch and Eduardo Trejos
This book is so joyful and so bold. It’s somehow both calming and empowering. And it’s for everybody. Writer and activist Lydia X. Z. Brown said it's “a love letter to the next generation of disabled kids, and a provocation for their nondisabled peers to rethink an ableist society’s assumptions” I love that this book is a collaboration between three people because so much of it is about unlearning the type of independence that isolates us and instead taking joy and comfort in the fact that we all collaborate with one another in different ways. In School Library Journal, author Kelly Fritsch noted: “Most books we encountered [as we were envisioning this one] did not include diverse disabled characters or engage with disability as a social justice issue. Seldom did [they] depict disability or assistive devices with accuracy, let alone as an aesthetic expression. The books we found were more about how sad or tragic disability is, depicting disability solely as a medical issue, or as a problem experienced by one individual.” And so they created something totally unique. Buy it for all of your kids and nieces and nephews!
This is just the start of a much longer list. The list of books by disabled authors is not as long as it should be, but it’s longer than the 3 books mentioned here. It’s important to remember that disability is not a monolith. Every experience within disability is unique. That’s why it’s so important to read work from a wide variety of disabled writers. This is a great month to ask yourself how often you read books or consume art by creators who identify as disabled or write from a lived disabled perspective.
And, of course, this is your reminder to skip Amazon and buy local!
Image description: My article in the IndyWeek about the Arts Access “Series of Fortunate Events” festival.
In case you missed it, back in May I wrote an article in the IndyWeek about the summer-long Arts Access Festival celebrating disabled artists. The most exciting part of this assignment was that I got to interview Disability Rights Icon Judy Heumann. Check out the article here.
***
Are you a writer who identifies as disabled who wants to find more resources to support your writing practice or find community? Here are a few places you may want to check out:
Zoeglossia, a community for poets with disabilities
Disabled Writers: a resource to help editors connect with disabled writers and journalists, and journalists connect with disabled sources. Their goal is to promote paid opportunities for multiply marginalized members of the disability community, and to encourage editors and journalists to think of disabled people for stories that stretch beyond disability issues.
Awesome Disability: Launched in April 2017, Awesome Disability is an independent chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a global community that provides micro-grants with no strings attached.
Hire Disabled Writers t-shirt, designed by writer and activist Kelly Dawson