Disability Pride Month: Recommended Reading
July is Disability Pride Month, and the Popular Reading Display in the Hill Library’s Learning Commons celebrates the vision, lives, and world-changing work of disability rights advocates.
July 2023
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir Of A Disability Rights Activist
Author: Judith Heumann; with Kristen Joiner
Summary: A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.
Demystifying Disability: What To Know, What To Say, and How To Be an Ally
Author: Emily Ladau
Summary: People with disabilities are the world's largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us—disabled and nondisabled alike—don't know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. Demystifying Disability is a friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century
Author: edited by Alice Wong
Summary: 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. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Author: Jenny Lawson
Summary: Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.
QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology
Author: edited by Raymond Luczak
Summary: Featuring fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics by forty-eight writers from around the world, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology is a penetrating and unforgettable look into the hearts and souls of those defiant enough to explore their own vulnerabilities and demonstrate their own strengths.
Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
Author: Rebekah Taussig
Summary: A memoir-in-essays from Rebekah Taussig—disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty—Sitting Pretty, processes a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs
Authors: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Summary: 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 Room Called Earth
Author: Madeleine Ryan
Summary: As a full moon rises over Melbourne, Australia, a young woman gets ready for a party. And what appears to be an ordinary night out is—through the prism of her singular perspective—extraordinary. As the evening unfolds, each encounter she has reveals the vast discrepancies between what she is thinking and feeling and what she is able to say.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
Author: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Summary: While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own place in the world.
The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, And Other Reasons To Fall in Love With Me
Author: Keah Brown
Summary:
From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, The Pretty One is a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America.
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life
Author: Alice Wong
Summary: This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist's journey finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice, from the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project.