The most recommended disability books

I’ve had an easy life in so many ways, so I appreciate learning from people whose childhood adversities shaped them to make positive changes in the world. When Emmanuel was born in Ghana with a deformed leg, his future looked bleak. Some considered him “cursed.” His mother encouraged him to dream big and become independent. He refused to be defined by his disability and ended up showing “that being disabled does not mean being unable.” To bring attention to the difficulties disabled people face Emmanuel organized and completed a 400-mile bike ride across Ghana. 

I love this book because Emmanuel’s mother believed he was more than his disability, and the way Emmanuel proved this to be true prompted the Ghanaian Parliament to pass the Persons with Disability Act. 

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. 

As a mother of a child with severe autism, I am grateful to Amy Lutz for writing a book that captures our family's unique challenges. Too often, media focuses on people with autism who need a lower level of support and it can feel like life with severe autism is being overlooked. Lutz’s beautiful writing gives you a window into a much-needed read.

This book is for every twentysomething out there with a learning difference. After years of struggling in school, maybe by now you’re feeling a bit beat up and worn down. This book will help you shake it off with a good laugh and a good cry and remind you that adult life and work don't have to be like the classroom. I laughed out loud with every page, except for the ones that broke my heart.

A beautifully written story reassuring kids that it is ok to be different and it is written through the eyes of a 10-year-old. Very powerful and an eye-opener to those that may not know what Autism looks like or what we look like to an Autistic child.

Alice Wong is an incredible writer and self-advocate and has put together an anthology of writers who share first-person experiences through. Variety of formats, including essays and interviews. It is eye-opening for anyone who is not disabled and also presents all of the work that our society needs to do to create accessibility and disability justice.

We are incredibly lucky to have so much important work in disability studies and disability justice coming out in the Fall of 2022. The Future Is Disabled is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s much-anticipated follow-up to Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Written during lockdown, this is an urgent and beautiful book, shifting from love letters to songs, recipes for survival, and provocative questions. For instance and central to this work, the book asks: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? The truth is that disabled people have had to weather an unprecedented assault on their value and had to assume huge risks over the past few years, as Nishida also shows. As with Kerschbaum, Nishida, and Schalk’s books, Piepzna-Samarasinha converses with disabled people to carefully document the many ways they have kept and are keeping each other—and the… show more.

I don’t consider myself a Fantasy reader. The details required for world-building and character motivation frequently become tedious and frustrating for me. But that’s not at all what happened with Aska.

I wanted to wrap my arms around the main character (Aska) and hold him in my heart, even when – as a berserker – he unleashed his fury. The author’s deft exposition of his internal world made it easy to relate to him.

Aska has a disability, but does not define him. So much so that when he did have to find ways to work around it, I’d completely forgotten that it existed.

This book was my favorite of the year because it up-ended my expectations of the genre and gave me someone new to deeply care for. 

Ok, confession time, I don't remember which book in the series Drew first appears in but if I recall this is the book that really focuses on him and Belinda. 

I don't read a lot of Inspirational fiction but I absolutely love the Love Comes Softly series. It was the first romance series I ever read. I read the series initially as a teenager but I have gone back and re-read a few of the books as an adult. 

This book has Drew who is missing an arm as a romantic interest for Belinda. The series also features Clark who is the romantic interest in book one and the patriarch of the family in the rest of the series who loses his leg in one of the later books. I adored his story and how him and Marty deal with accepting his injury. However, since Marty and Clark are already… show more.

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.