100 books like Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability

By Paul K. Longmore,

Here are 100 books that Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability fans have personally recommended if you like Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors

Meredith Eliassen Author Of Helen Keller: A Life in American History

From my list on disability and related inclusive movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

There have always been disabled people shaping my worldview and understanding, however, I am an expert only about my own disabilities. Disabled storytellers, including Helen Keller, sometimes utilize tactical silence to scream… I value that! However, barriers confronting the disabled require broad and sometimes loud collective action from many people in many communities and not just a marginalized few. Disability activism is a complex, tactical fight over time for self-determination that touches all of us at some point. COVID, world events, and experiencing some barriers disabled and marginalized groups face all the time have compelled me to share a few of my favorite reads related to disability and inclusion.

Meredith's book list on disability and related inclusive movements

Meredith Eliassen Why did Meredith love this book?

We do not know the toll that the COVID pandemic will have in the future, we collectively only know the trauma it has wrought. Most of the disabled people I have known, including Paul Longmore, became disabled from poliovirus attacking child populations. Polio was a vector for societal transformation as the disabled constructed new lives abruptly altered by the disease. This book focuses on polio survivors. Wilson surveyed over 150 polio narratives focusing on the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers (1930-1960) to learn about experiences over lifetimes. While some experienced temporary paralysis, others faced lifetime disability dealing with the disability industry, public relations campaigns, and rehabilitation programs. Survivors fought for accessibility and the ability to work in mainstream occupations. This book offers layered experiences still relevant today.

By Daniel J. Wilson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Living with Polio as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Polio was the most dreaded disease of twentieth-century America. Whenever and wherever it struck, hospitals filled with victims of the virus. Many experienced only temporary paralysis, but others faced a lifetime of disability. "Living with Polio" is the first book to focus primarily on the personal stories of the men and women who had acute polio and lived with its crippling consequences. Writing from his own experience as a polio survivor, Daniel J. Wilson shapes this impassioned book with the testimonials of numerous polio victims, focusing on the years between 1930 and 1960. He traces entire life experiences of the…


Book cover of Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard

Meredith Eliassen Author Of Helen Keller: A Life in American History

From my list on disability and related inclusive movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

There have always been disabled people shaping my worldview and understanding, however, I am an expert only about my own disabilities. Disabled storytellers, including Helen Keller, sometimes utilize tactical silence to scream… I value that! However, barriers confronting the disabled require broad and sometimes loud collective action from many people in many communities and not just a marginalized few. Disability activism is a complex, tactical fight over time for self-determination that touches all of us at some point. COVID, world events, and experiencing some barriers disabled and marginalized groups face all the time have compelled me to share a few of my favorite reads related to disability and inclusion.

Meredith's book list on disability and related inclusive movements

Meredith Eliassen Why did Meredith love this book?

Paul Longmore assigned Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language for the “Disability in America” course I took. As a folklorist this book hooked me. It is totally unique, combining science (genetics), history, maritime culture, and community. It consolidates sign language “oral histories” documenting a Deaf community’s cultural heritage in Martha’s Vineyard passed through generations. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language offers an essential message from this tight-knit community where deafness was more a trait than a disability. Understanding how Helen Keller had a Deafblind destiny shaped by her times (as earlier were Deafblind woman should be women Julia Brace and Laura Bridgman), I sometimes wonder if Keller would have been less stressed if she had not been pressured by proponents of auralism like Alexander Graham Bell to learn to speak aloud.

By Nora Ellen Groce,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the seventeenth century to the early years of the twentieth, the population of Martha's Vineyard manifested an extremely high rate of profound hereditary deafness. In stark contrast to the experience of most Deaf people in our own society, the Vineyarders who were born Deaf were so thoroughly integrated into the daily life of the community that they were not seen-and did not see themselves-as handicapped or as a group apart. Deaf people were included in all aspects of life, such as town politics, jobs, church affairs, and social life. How was this possible?

On the Vineyard, hearing and Deaf…


Book cover of Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts

Meredith Eliassen Author Of Helen Keller: A Life in American History

From my list on disability and related inclusive movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

There have always been disabled people shaping my worldview and understanding, however, I am an expert only about my own disabilities. Disabled storytellers, including Helen Keller, sometimes utilize tactical silence to scream… I value that! However, barriers confronting the disabled require broad and sometimes loud collective action from many people in many communities and not just a marginalized few. Disability activism is a complex, tactical fight over time for self-determination that touches all of us at some point. COVID, world events, and experiencing some barriers disabled and marginalized groups face all the time have compelled me to share a few of my favorite reads related to disability and inclusion.

Meredith's book list on disability and related inclusive movements

Meredith Eliassen Why did Meredith love this book?

My personal creativity is not tidy… I believe nobody creates in a vacuum. The disabled contribute intelligence, perspective, and expression to all modes of creative production. Understanding how to utilize talent from any historically marginalized group means learning how to communicate with folks with diverse abilities and backgrounds. Utilizing respectful language and practices with diverse communities will draw and engage audiences with more vibrant storytelling in today’s world. This practical guide includes case studies designed to guide theater companies to create inclusive productions with the disabled in central and creative roles. Disability and Theatre illustrates how in the theater, where “all the world is a stage”, as in our own lives, creative processes emerge when people with different abilities work together… that is just good living.

By Stephanie Barton-Farcas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Disability and Theatre as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts is a step-by step manual on how to create inclusive theatre, including how and where to find actors, how to publicize productions, run rehearsals, act intricate scenes like fights and battles, work with unions, contracts, and agents, and deal with technical issues. This practical information was born from the author's 16 years of running the first inclusive theatre company in New York City, and is applicable to any performance level: children's theatre, community theatre, regional theatre, touring companies, Broadway, and academic theatre. This book features anecdotal case studies that…


Book cover of We Move Together

Meredith Eliassen Author Of Helen Keller: A Life in American History

From my list on disability and related inclusive movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

There have always been disabled people shaping my worldview and understanding, however, I am an expert only about my own disabilities. Disabled storytellers, including Helen Keller, sometimes utilize tactical silence to scream… I value that! However, barriers confronting the disabled require broad and sometimes loud collective action from many people in many communities and not just a marginalized few. Disability activism is a complex, tactical fight over time for self-determination that touches all of us at some point. COVID, world events, and experiencing some barriers disabled and marginalized groups face all the time have compelled me to share a few of my favorite reads related to disability and inclusion.

Meredith's book list on disability and related inclusive movements

Meredith Eliassen Why did Meredith love this book?

I believe a society’s resilience does not happen by coddling, oppressing, or marginalizing the disabled (or any minority group), but by fostering holistic, inclusive communities that move in cinque. We Move Together is a picture book about disability justice designed for intergenerational sharing. It is appropriate for all ages as it simply states we as a society move best together no matter of disability, race, gender, or age. The brilliance of this straightforward assertion is its universal intersectionality. The book contains helpful explanations of statements in the verses along with resources for learning more in the back. I love this message! Removing barriers to access, communication, work, relationships, and living independent and self-determined lives helps everyone and fosters healthy democracy.

By Kelly Fritsch, Anne McGuire, Eduardo Trejos (illustrator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We Move Together as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A bold and colorful exploration of all the ways that people navigate through the spaces around them and a celebration of the relationships we build along the way. We Move Together follows a mixed-ability group of kids as they creatively negotiate everyday barriers and find joy and connection in disability culture and community. A perfect tool for families, schools, and libraries to facilitate conversations about disability, accessibility, social justice and community building. Includes a kid-friendly glossary (for ages 3–10). This fully accessible ebook includes alt-text for image descriptions, a read aloud function, and a zoom-in function that allows readers to…


Book cover of The Right to Maim

J. Moufawad-Paul Author Of Austerity Apparatus

From my list on the state and state repression.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my long-standing interests, as a political philosopher, has been to examine the deployment of state power and the state forms (what I call states of affairs) the capitalist mode of production takes in order to preserve its economic order. Since I completed my doctorate, which was on the articulation of settler-colonial power in relationship to remaining settler states, I have largely been invested in thinking politics: how dominant politics maintain the current order, how counter-hegemonic politics disrupt this order. 

J.'s book list on the state and state repression

J. Moufawad-Paul Why did J. love this book?

I find Puar’s work to be very useful even if the theoretical framework she uses is different from, though adjacent to, mine. Usually I find the “biopolitical” analysis cloying and idealist, but Puar has developed her own materialist use of this framework that I have learned a lot from. In The Right to Maim Puar examines the liberal state’s use of maiming and debilitation as part of the reproduction of its hegemony. Not only does she examine the way a liberal disability discourse functions to exclude marginalized and targeted populations—proposing a vector of disability, debility, and capacity—she also interrogates how maiming functions in capitalist, colonial, and imperialist state policing. Moreover, her case study of Palestine, based on her own fieldwork, makes the more abstract aspects of her theory concrete.  

By Jasbir K. Puar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Right to Maim as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Black Disability Politics

Jay Timothy Dolmage Author Of Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

From my list on fighting ableism and building a better future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in the Disability Rights movement in Canada, fighting for my brother’s right to go to school, to receive medical care, and to be part of our community. For decades, disabled people were institutionalized away from their families and communities, warehoused instead of schooled. My uncle Robert died of neglect in one of these terrible places as a child. My family has been involved in supporting a class action lawsuit against the Ontario government for its responsibility. Since then, the right to education has been better established, and the institutions were closed. But I continue to fight for inclusion and against ableism in education, healthcare, and across our culture.

Jay's book list on fighting ableism and building a better future

Jay Timothy Dolmage Why did Jay love this book?

Black Disability Politics also just came out in early Fall 2022, and I was very excited to receive my print copy. The book shows how Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue tightly tied to race and racism. This, however, has not been the story told in disability studies or in mainstream histories of the Disability Rights movement. Schalk deeply explores archives (for instance those of the Black Panther Party) and layers these findings across interviews with contemporary Black disabled community organizers, to recognize the richness and power of Black disability politics. This book is full of surprises, memorable archival anecdotes, and powerful conversations between Schalk and others. You should read this book! If a goal within ableist and white supremacist society is liberation, Schalk shows how essential it is to engage in antiracist, feminist, and anti-ableist political and cultural coalition.

By Sami Schalk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Black Disability Politics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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. Schalk shows how Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue deeply tied to race and racism. She points out that this work has not been recognized as part of the legacy of disability justice and liberation because Black disability politics differ in language and approach from the mainstream white-dominant disability rights movement. Drawing on the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women's Health Project alongside…


Book cover of Signs of Disability

Jay Timothy Dolmage Author Of Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

From my list on fighting ableism and building a better future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in the Disability Rights movement in Canada, fighting for my brother’s right to go to school, to receive medical care, and to be part of our community. For decades, disabled people were institutionalized away from their families and communities, warehoused instead of schooled. My uncle Robert died of neglect in one of these terrible places as a child. My family has been involved in supporting a class action lawsuit against the Ontario government for its responsibility. Since then, the right to education has been better established, and the institutions were closed. But I continue to fight for inclusion and against ableism in education, healthcare, and across our culture.

Jay's book list on fighting ableism and building a better future

Jay Timothy Dolmage Why did Jay love this book?

I was lucky to get the opportunity to read an advance copy of Dr. Kerschbaum's latest monograph, Signs of Disability (in the press and available in both print and open access in Fall 2022). The book focuses on the signs of disability we can recognize everywhere around us: yellow diamond-shaped “deaf person in area” road signs, that wheelchair parking icon, the telltale shapes of hearing aids, or white-tipped canes sweeping across footpaths. But even though the signs are ubiquitous, Kerschbaum argues that disability may still not be perceived as anything but a token or an apparition. This engaging, accessible book builds on Kerschbaum’s already-award-winning scholarship on difference and discourse, constructing new research methods and approaches, but also building community on these pages. Drawing on a set of thirty-three research interviews, as well as written narratives by disabled people, this book builds a new system of signs and significance for disability.…

By Stephanie L. Kerschbaum,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Signs of Disability as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How can we learn to notice the signs of disability?
We see indications of disability everywhere: yellow diamond-shaped "deaf person in area" road signs, the telltale shapes of hearing aids, or white-tipped canes sweeping across footpaths. But even though the signs are ubiquitous, Stephanie L. Kerschbaum argues that disability may still not be perceived due to a process she terms "dis-attention."
To tell better stories of disability, this multidisciplinary work turns to rhetoric, communications, sociology, and phenomenology to understand the processes by which the material world becomes sensory input that then passes through perceptual apparatuses to materialize phenomena-including disability. By…


Book cover of The Disability Studies Reader

Karen Havelin Author Of Please Read This Leaflet Carefully: Keep This Leaflet. You May Need to Read It Again.

From my list on to help you keep on living with chronic illness.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like my main character, I’m a Norwegian writer with ties to the US, who grew up with various chronic illnesses. I discovered the reason for much of my trouble when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. Isolated and in pain, I have always turned to books. I craved seeing my life reflected. Since Please Read This Leaflet Carefully came out, I’ve heard from many readers. I hope that it can help people who haven’t seen themselves in art before. This list addresses the needs of a life with chronic illness and pain: guidance, darkness, humor, comfort, and poetry. I hope these books will help you as much as they did me. 

Karen's book list on to help you keep on living with chronic illness

Karen Havelin Why did Karen love this book?

I was absolutely stunned when I read "Unspeakable Conversations" by Harriet McBryde Johnson, one of the many brilliant pieces included in this reader. My edition is from 2010, but new and updated editions have come out since. It explores questions of interdependency and independence, gender, the body, sexuality, biases in science and medicine, and physical disabilities, and investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities.

Becoming familiar with some disability theories has been invaluable to me. My capacity to read myself as disabled has grown and still fluctuates. To know that sharp minds have been working on this and that it isn’t only a private issue but a political and theoretical one, one that can be marked by joy and humor as well as grief, struggle, and hardship, is immensely helpful. 

By Lennard J. Davis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Disability Studies Reader as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The fifth edition of The Disability Studies Reader addresses the post-identity theoretical landscape by emphasizing questions of interdependency and independence, the human-animal relationship, and issues around the construction or materiality of gender, the body, and sexuality. Selections explore the underlying biases of medical and scientific experiments and explode the binary of the sound and the diseased mind. The collection addresses physical disabilities, but as always investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities as well. Featuring a new generation of scholars who are dealing with the most current issues, the fifth edition continues the Reader's tradition of remaining timely,…


Book cover of Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

Jodi Aman Author Of Anxiety...I'm So Done with You: A Teen's Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress and Hardwiring Your Brain for Happiness

From my list on to teach teens how to love themselves.

Why am I passionate about this?

My love of helping others to heal started early. From the garden I started when I was 8-years-old to the baby ducks I found a home for when I was 10, I have always been passionate about nurturing life. I feel deep empathy for the complexities of others’ pain and am compelled to stand against the context of injustice that causes it. Using this keen understanding of why people suffer, my unique and varied training, rooted ethics, and 25 years of trauma-informed clinical experience, I now help the helpers release what they don't want, recover their energetic bandwidth, and grok a socially conscious life of overflowing joy. 

Jodi's book list on to teach teens how to love themselves

Jodi Aman Why did Jodi love this book?

This is an anthology for teens that explores disability from a fictional lens, so that it entertains as it teaches tolerance and compassion. Each short story’s author lives with a disability and writes about first loves, friendship, hardship, and adventure. Unbroken is for teen readers to step into the shoes of teens with disabilities so that they can understand other experiences besides their own. Understanding differences and recognizing one’s own positionality and privilege helps teen find their own agency, purpose, and empowered hope for the future. 

By Marieke Nijkamp,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Unbroken as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This anthology explores disability in fictional tales told from the viewpoint of disabled characters, written by disabled creators. With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.

The contributing authors are award winners, bestsellers, and newcomers including Kody Keplinger, Kristine Wyllys, Francisco X. Stork, William Alexander, Corinne Duyvis, Marieke Nijkamp, Dhonielle Clayton, Heidi Heilig, Katherine Locke, Karuna Riazi, Kayla Whaley, Keah Brown, and Fox Benwell. Each author identifies as disabled along a physical, mental, or neurodiverse…


Book cover of Howie Helps Himself

Tylia L. Flores Author Of As seen through the eyes of a disabled woman Cerebral Palsy: A Beauty to be discovered

From my list on overcoming challenges and obstacles of cerebral palsy.

Why am I passionate about this?

In the years since I was 15, I have been writing and publishing books. After graduating from Florida Virtual School in 2014, I am currently pursuing a liberal arts degree with a focus on disabilities education. I'm passionate about literature, and I've dedicated myself to educating others about disabilities through my love of literature. Furthermore, I own a radio station and produce several podcasts related to disability. I contribute to seven different sites, including the mighty thought catalog and unwritten, where I talk about my life as a 27-year-old with a disability. I am also an advocate for disability rights, as well as a writer and author for disability issues.

Tylia's book list on overcoming challenges and obstacles of cerebral palsy

Tylia L. Flores Why did Tylia love this book?

When I look back at my journey, I feel that this book was the beginning of my survival guide in a world that wasn't made for me. It lets readers with disabilities, such as myself, realize that it's OK to do things in society in a different way. This is because it's not your disability that defines who you are. We provided me with the proper written representation I needed. Reading about how he helps himself really boosts the self-esteem of children with disabilities, especially cerebral palsy.

By Joan Fassler, Joe Lasker (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Howie Helps Himself as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Howie wants to make his father proud of him by learning to move his own wheelchair as his classmates do


Book cover of Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors
Book cover of Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard
Book cover of Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts

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