As July begins, it feels as though the summer continues to speed by at an alarming rate – but there’s always time to pause to recognize Disability Pride Month! Disability Pride Month began in 1990 as a celebration of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). When researching the history of this month, I found this Disability Pride Month 101 article helpful in putting the month into context and providing reminders about the insidious nature of ableism and how to combat it. To mark Disability Pride Month at the library, you can find a display of books by disabled authors and/or featuring disabled characters on the first floor of Shapiro throughout July. Not on campus? This mix of fiction and nonfiction titles in the display are also available online now:
- True Biz: A Novel - Sara Novic (also available as an audiobook). “This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.”
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin. “Spanning thirty years,…Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.”
- The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving: A Novel - Jonathan Evison. “After losing virtually everything meaningful in his life, Benjamin trains to be a caregiver, but his first client, a fiercely independent teen with muscular dystrophy, gives him more than he bargained for and soon the two embark on a road trip to visit the boy's ailing father.”
- Cyborg Detective: Poems - Jillian Weise. “In her third collection of poems, Jillian Weise delivers a reckoning to the ableism of the Western Canon….Part invective, part love poem, Cyborg Detective holds a magnifying glass to the marginalization and fetishization of disabled people while claiming space and pride for the people who already use technology and cybernetic implants every day.”
- The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. “Written over the course of two years of disabled isolation during the pandemic, this is a book of love letters to other disabled QTBIPOC (and those concerned about disability justice, the care crisis, and surviving the apocalypse); honour songs for kin who are gone; recipes for survival; questions and real talk about care, organizing, disabled families, and kin networks and communities; and wild brown disabled femme joy in the face of death.”
- Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally - Emily Ladau. “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 accessible, inclusive place.”
- Disability Visibility: First-person Stories from the Twenty-first Century - edited by Alice Wong. “This anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love."
In addition, the following books are available to read online only:
- Crip kinship: the disability justice & art activism of Sins Invalid - Shayda Kafai. “Crip Kinship explores the art-activism of Sins Invalid, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performance project, and its radical imaginings of what disabled, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming bodyminds of color can do: how they can rewrite oppression, and how they can gift us with transformational lessons for our collective survival.”
- Disfigured: on fairy tales, disability, and making space - Amanda Leduc. “If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.”
- The Disturbed Girl's Dictionary - NoNieqa Ramos. “Fifteen-year-old Macy, officially labeled "disturbed" by her school, records her impressions of her rough neighborhood and home life as she tries to rescue her brother from Child Protective Services, win back her overachieving best friend after a fight, and figure out whether to tell her incarcerated father about her mother's cheating.”
- On the edge of gone - Corinne Duyvis. "In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2034, a comet is due to hit the Earth within the hour. Denise, who's sixteen years old and autistic, must try to find her missing sister and also help her neglectful, undependable mother safely aboard a spaceship."
- A Taxonomy of Love - Rachael Allen. “The moment Spencer meets Hope the summer before seventh grade, it’s . . . something at first sight….The pair become fast friends, climbing trees and planning world travels. After years of being outshone by his older brother and teased because of his Tourette syndrome, Spencer finally feels like he belongs. But as Hope and Spencer get older and life gets messier, the clear label of “friend” gets messier, too.”