Disability Awareness: Books

Inspired by the civilizations of pre-Columbian America, woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, forbidden magic, and crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic fantasy adventure in this original series debut. In the holy city of Tova three lives are converging during a solar eclipse, proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova, set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind. Her ship carries one "harmless," passenger, Serapio, a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. But, as Xiala knows, when a man is described as harmless, he often ends up being a villain

"Veronica has always dreamed of being a mermaid. When she's in the water, the pain caused by her hip dysplasia fades, and people can't see the scars from her numerous surgeries. On land, things are less clear. Then Veronica discovers that her parents have sheltered her from the full truth about her medical condition. So maybe it's time for all the secrets to come out and for her to make her own choices, on her own terms. Because who's in charge of her body, and her life, anyway?"

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

"Eighteen for the three hundred twenty-seventh time, Prince Rhen despairs of breaking the curse that turns him into a beast at the end of each day until feisty Harper enters his life."

A novel of small-town life in the high plains region around Holt, Colorado, follows the challenges, emotional upheaval, tragedies, and intertwined destinies of the local inhabitants as they cope with the changes they encounter.

"Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. She's come up with seven directives to help her "Get a Life". But it's not easy being independent, and Chloe knows just the man to help her complete her list. Redford 'Red' Morgan is a handyman who paints at night but hides his work. When she enlists Red to help her rebel, she discovers what really lies beneath his rough exterior."

The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that battle the aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall of China. It doesn't matter that the girls die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. When she gets her vengeance, it becomes clear that she is an Iron Widow, a rare female pilot who can sacrifice males to power Chrysalises instead. To tame her frightening yet valuable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest male pilot in Huaxia, feared and ostracized for killing his father and brothers. Now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower easily. She will take over instead, leveraging their combined strength to force her society to stop failing its women and girls. Or die trying.

"Eighteen-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths. They've both been playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals... until they meet."

"Arlo Dilly is eager to meet the right girl. He is also DeafBlind, a Jehovah's Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his uncle. Chances of finding love seem low. Yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met a girl with onyx eyes and expressive hands telling amazing stories. Tragedy struck; their love was lost forever. After years healing his broken heart a college writing assignment unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he trusted have lied to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again. No longer accepting what others tell him, Arlo convinces his misfit friends to go on a journey to learn the truth. Arlo is determined to find the girl who got away and experience all of life's joyful possibilities"

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend, Tristan, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she's been in love with him since childhood. Tristan discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives - even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristan to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat notices a dark presence following her, and Tristan begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristan may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This novel plunges you into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, you'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress, a CODA (child of deaf adult(s)) who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. A series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another - and changed forever. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and great persistence, daring, and joy. This is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.

A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother.

A witty and revelatory narrative of the author's transition from sightedness to blindness - and his quest to learn all he can about blindness as a distinct culture all its own. We meet Andrew Leland as he's suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, this book represents Leland's determination not to merely survive this transition, but to grow from it - to seek out that which makes blindness enlightening.

First-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience. Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people. According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together a galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. This anthology reveals the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of these communities.

From Chloe Cooper Jones--Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient--a groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and a journey to far-flung places in search of a new way of seeing and being seen. "I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living." So begins Chloe Cooper Jones's bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor "pain calculations" into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. There is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, being dismissed as "less than." The way she has been seen--or not seen--has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to "the neutral room in her mind" until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), she shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she'd been denied, and denied herself. From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyonce concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability, interrogating her own complicity in upholding those myths. With its emotional depth, its prodigious, spiky intelligence, its passion and humor, Easy Beauty is a memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes

Chronic illnesses afflict millions of Americans: diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, often undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Meghan O’Rourke investigates this elusive category of “invisible” illness: autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID. Synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us with this adversity. O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, revealing how our ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. As America faces this confusing health crisis the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.

"Samantha Irby’s much-anticipated, sidesplitting fourth book. The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had. Making light of herself, she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of the details of her life, Irby is the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need"

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; as she got older she longed for more stories that showed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in everyday media translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity.

Hannah Gadsby's standup special Nanette was a viral success, her worldwide fame may have seemed like an overnight sensation. But, there's more to her success than meets the eye. In her first book, the queer Australian comedian, writer, and actress takes us through the key moments in her life that ultimately led to the creation of Nanette and her startling declaration that she was quitting comedy. She traces her growth as a gay woman from Tasmania--where homosexuality was illegal until 1997--to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette--the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral power of telling the truth.

Harriet McBryde Johnson's witty and unconventional memoir opens with a meditation on death and ends with a bold sermon on pleasure. Born with a congenital neuromuscular disease, Johnson has always needed assistance. With assistance, she celebrates her life's richness and pleasures and pursues a formidable career as an attorney and activist.

Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; and has experienced it firsthand. While she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.