Books To Read for Disability Pride Month

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. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice Wong traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.

Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair’s Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement.

A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of the author’s transition from sightedness to blindness and his quest to learn about blindness as a rich culture all its own. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it — to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening. Brimming with warmth and humor, it is an exhilarating tour of a new way of being.

The much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: Another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms.

Carla Sosenko was born with Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, a rare vascular disorder that resulted in legs of different sizes, a mass of flesh on her back, a hunched posture, and other idiosyncrasies big and small. In this candid and funny memoir, Sosenko shares what existing in an unconventional body has meant for her self-image, mental health, relationships, and ambitions. A clarion call for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider or believed they should take up less space, I’ll Look So Hot in a Coffin offers hope, recognition, and a new way to see ourselves — by celebrating what sets us apart.

An approachable guide to being 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 inclusive place.

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.

Disability advocate and recovery expert Jane Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is “against you,” she presents new ways to cope with your body’s fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace. Along the way, she walks you through the seven stages of Body Grief — from dismissal, shock, and self-blame to hopelessness and hope, and eventual body trust — offering wisdom for how to make space for each difficult emotion as it arises.

A “tender, beautiful, and radiantly outraged” (The New York Times Book Review) novel that follows a year of seismic romantic, political, and familial shifts for a teacher and her students at a boarding school for the deaf, from the acclaimed author of Girl at War.

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young children, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year, he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, Bauby bears witness to his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had been able to do in his body. Jean-Dominique Bauby died two days after the French publication of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. This book is a lasting testament to his life.

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, this bombshell bestseller in Japan is a defiant, darkly funny debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life. Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and its unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it’s a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences.

An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today, and how disability attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The uplifting, adventure-filled memoir of one groundbreaking scientist’s quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants. Dr. Quave is a leading medical ethnobotanist helping to provide clues for the next generation of advanced medicines. And as a person born with multiple congenital defects of her skeletal system, she’s done it all with just one leg. In The Plant Hunter, Dr. Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to tell us the extraordinary story of her own journey.

“A raw, intimate look at [Henrickson’s] life with a stutter. It’s a profoundly moving book that will reshape the way you think about people living with this condition” (Esquire). Life on Delay is an indelible account of perseverance, a soulful narrative about not giving up, and a glimpse into the process of making peace with our past and present selves.

The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies. Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva’s work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author’s magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.

A parent’s guide to empowering children to embrace their visible and invisible differences. Born Extraordinary helps parents of children with differences and disabilities to relinquish their instinctive anxieties, embrace their new normal, and ultimately find joy in watching their children thrive. Parents learn how best to empower their children to confront others’ assumptions, grow in confidence, and encourage dialogue — rather than silence, fear, and shame — around difference.

The incredible story of an all-deaf high school football team’s triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a fascinating portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach who spearheaded the team, by New York Times reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief, Thomas Fuller.